


Full Circle

by ashesandhoney



Series: Full Circle Verse [13]
Category: Infernal Devices Series - Cassandra Clare, Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: AU, Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, F/M, M/M, Multi, Post-COHF, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-02-22 12:38:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 43
Words: 132,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2508131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhoney/pseuds/ashesandhoney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story uses a time travel plot line to drop Will into the middle of Jem and Tessa's life in 2014.</p>
<p>(It is unlikely that I will ever come back to this. It's an abandoned fic. I'm so sorry to those who were following it, I appreciate all your support but I wrote myself into a corner and ruined it for myself. I can't find a way to get myself reinterested in this story).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Invitation

2014 

Tessa had two phones. When the black one had rang out it did so with a snippet of a rap song in something other than English that played on electronic loop. Tessa looked up from what she was doing and sent her husband to deal with it. He answered it carefully. James Carstairs was tall and thin with a fall of dark brown hair and runes across the arches of his cheekbones. He picked up the phone and looked at the screen for a long moment before he swept a finger across the screen to unlock it and answer. He'd been a Shadowhunter once as had Tessa. They were both more complicated these days.

"Tessa Gray's phone, can I help you?" he said.

The second phone, the same model but in a case plastered with literary quotes and a background that was a picture of the two of them on a beach sat beside this one, silent. That was Tess Carstairs's phone and he wouldn't have been so careful answering it. It was the number that her friends called. The black phone's number went out to warlock contacts and people who might call with business. She claimed to have had the same number for the past 35 years.

"I had heard she'd gotten married but no, apparently she'd gone and gotten herself a secretary!" the voice on the other end of the phone was female and slightly accented though he couldn't immediately place where it was from. She spoke grandly and he imagined the arm waving that went with the pronouncement.

"She can't talk right now, can I give her a message?" Jem said ignoring everything else.

"The fuck she can't talk right now," the voice wasn't quite angry, it was almost jovial even through the swearing, "Put the hoity-toity bitch on the phone. Tell her it is Natasha and remind her that she fucking owes me. Can't talk. The fuck is that?"

Jem stood still and speechless. He considered his response before he spoke. Rather than getting angry he asked, "Hoity-toity?"

"Listen, Secretary," Natasha said, "I'm working on a very interesting project and I could use someone who can track spells and isn't an idiot. Your hoity-toity, fancy pants wife matches both those requirements. So go give the bitch the phone."

Tessa had appeared at his side while the profanity laced tirade was going on. She'd been elbow deep in some concoction in the spare room when she'd sent him to answer the phone and was still wiping the herb mixture off her arm. The hand towel looked like it had been used to kill something bloody and green. She raised her eyebrows at him. He turned the phone so she could see the display which was a photo of an orange haired warlock with curling horns and a toothy grin.

"Has she suggested anything anatomically impossible yet?" Tessa asked but she used Mandarin not English. When they'd been young he'd taught her the basics but in the years they had spent apart she'd mastered it. She spoke with an English accent but her vocabulary was broader than his: encompassing modern words that hadn't existed when he'd been a child speaking the language with his mother. The first time she'd had to explain a modern grammatical quirk that he had told her was an error, she'd been smug and teasing for days. Jem had found it adorable. Annoying but adorable.

"I can hear her, speaking in foreign tongues does not hide her voice. Listen, I can do it too," Natasha drawled in his ear before launching into a stream of something rapid and Eastern European though he couldn't place the language.

"Just insults," he answered Tessa still in Chinese. She smiled at him. Her green magic goo had gotten on her tank top and she wore a pair of very old, very tattered jeans. They had long dried paint on them that matched the kitchen walls. They'd been the ones to do the painting when they'd moved in. He found it hard to care about Natasha and her very interesting project when Tessa's shirt had slipped up and left her hip bare. They'd been married five years and she could still reduce him to a distracted boy with a crush with just a hint of skin. Sometimes all it took was her presence in the room to draw his attention from everything else.

"A good secretary passes on the phone, asshole," Natasha said and he finally held it out to Tessa who rolled her eyes but took it.

"What did you call him?" she said a soon as the phone was up to her ear. Her voice was all annoyance and anger but her expression wasn't nearly so hostile. Her face broke into a smile and Jem was left to wonder at this friend who was allowed to call Tessa by names like hoity-toity bitch and it could make her smile. He understood it. His best friend had called him bastard almost as often as he'd called him by his given name and after all these years just those memories could make his heart hurt a little.

"Want to go to Venice?" she asked him shaking him out of his own memories.

"The one in California or the one in Italy?" he asked.

"Italy," she answered.

"Anywhere and everywhere," he said. "We haven't been to Italy yet."

"No, Nat," Tessa said to the phone, "He's non-negotiable and you know that other people can't do what I can do," a pause that Jem imagined was full of swearing. Tessa gave a careless shrug that Nat couldn’t see, "That's your decision."

Tessa was still arguing in that soft authoritative voice that she had learned from Charlotte Fairchild decades before. Most people crumbled under the force of that voice but Nat didn't seem to be wavering.

They stood in the kitchen of their apartment in New York. The phones were plugged in on a little shelf that was easy to walk by on the way from the front door. Tessa made an exasperated noise and left the room. If she weren't barefoot the action might have counted as stomping.

The living room was sunken below the kitchen and entrance way to allow for 12 feet of east facing windows on one wall and 12 feet of bookshelves on two others. There were stairs on either side but Tessa vaulted the railing that separated the upper hall from the lower and he heard her hit the sofa below with a soft thump. Jem followed her but didn't jump down. He leaned on the rail and looked out at the view. New York spread out around and below them. The rising sun heated this room intolerably on summer mornings but it was late afternoon now and the buildings were awash in bright light.

He'd been born in a world that didn't get this high. The first true skyscrapers didn't rise until after he'd joined the Silent Brothers and left the world and its inexorable march of progress behind. Sometimes the vertigo would catch up to him. When it did, he went and leaned against the glass and steel balcony with its now decimated herb garden and stare straight down. It didn't always chase the vertigo away but it was such a human feeling - such an alive feeling - that he didn't really care. He challenged the fear and the feeling of falling and always came away the winner.

"Did she agree?" Jem asked when Tessa clicked off the phone. The couch was green and old fashioned like something they might have had if they'd been married when they had intended back in 1878. Tessa tilted her head back. The cat, curled in a ball on the matching arm chair across the room, opened one yellow eye and surveyed them both as though calculating his chances of getting out of this without having to travel. He was old - very old - and grumpy but was a terror to leave at shelters or with friends so he usually got dragged along with them which made him only moderately less of a terror.

"Not really but she gave up fighting with me," Tessa said.

"That's almost like winning an argument," Jem said. "It's how Will used to win all of his."

"That's not true," Tessa said.

"It's almost true," he said. "It was very true when he was fifteen."

"That I will concede. Go pack," she said laughing. Some days, Will was just a piece of their past. Other days, talking about Will could leave them both grief struck and clinging together.

Today was the former and Jem was thankful for it. He couldn't imagine having weathered the loss of Will with all his emotions intact if he didn't have her. Will had died while he was a Silent Brother. He hadn’t felt the force of that loss until a lifetime later. He couldn't imagine how she had done it. He leaned forward and reached out a hand. She climbed onto the sofa back and took it to balance herself before she kissed him. She was the strong one, that had always been true. He kissed her again.

"Pack," she said. "I'll get us a hotel."

"Will I like Venice?" he asked.

"I've never been," she said which made him smile. He liked her little tours when they found themselves somewhere she had been before. She knew the stories and she picked out the landmarks. It was nice but he loved the chance to discover a place together.

"I'm going to pack right this instant," he said before she could tell him again but he pulled her in and kissed her one more time. She smelled of her herb mix but tasted of coffee and something sweet. Her smile was soft and happy when he pulled away. He really didn't care what Natasha's big project was. It didn't matter. They were going together. That was the important part. 


	2. So Far Apart

1878

 

Cool summer rain ticked against the library windows but a fire kept the room where William Herondale was not reading warm. He sat by the fire, though really it was too warm for it, and held a book of poetry as though he were engrossed in every word. Black hair fell forward around his face, it needed to be cut but he just hadn't had the time or the energy for it. It obscured his vision which was a problem in a fight but something of an asset at the moment.

He wasn't alone in the room. Gideon sat at one of the table cleaning weapons. Charlotte would purse her lips and tell him that they had a weapons room for that purpose but he hadn't yet been caught at it. Gideon was silent except for the clink of blades as he moved them around on the mat he'd spread over the table. Destroying the surface of the table with nicks and smears of ichor would get him in real trouble.

Will's self preservation failed and he looked up. His hair was in the way but at the other end of the table Jem and Tessa were visible leaned together over a spread of papers. All her attention was on him as it so often was when they were together. She was concentrating with a tiny frown line between her eyebrows. Will dropped his attention back to the words on his page.

They were so happy.

He wanted them to be happy. He needed them to be happy. But neither wanting it nor needing it stopped them from breaking his heart a little more with every soft laugh.

Jem was explaining how pronunciation differences could change a word's meaning in Chinese and she was struggling with it. For Jem, language was music and he could talk about sound for hours. For Tessa, language was meaning and Will could see when she lost the thread of what he was saying and got frustrated again. He dropped his eyes again.

He would not watch them.

His attention flicked up again and he forced it back to the book.

If he got up, he could sit down on Tessa's other side and fill in the gaps that Jem was unintentionally leaving. He'd learned the language the same way, listening to Jem and his music metaphors and he could help it make sense for her. Jem would tell stories about Will's failures and successes and she'd laugh. They’d make room for him in their little circle.

But then, then he'd have to sit there, right beside her. Right beside her but so far apart. She would smile at him, listen to him and then turn her unwavering attention back to Jem. His heart hurt just to imagine it.

He closed his book and stood up without actually deciding what he was going to do. He was either going to cross the room and make some comment and drop himself into that chair or he was going to run. His feet, without a conscious decision from his head, marched him right out the door of the library. Jem called something after him and he tossed back a joke that he didn't remember later.

He ran away to hide and let his heart be broken where no one else could see it.

 

His feet hit the wet pavement and he pulled his hat down more securely over his too long hair and headed out into the London night. His plan was simple, walk until he was too tired to think. It would be easy. Perhaps he'd come home after Cecily had gone to bed and avoid having to argue about writing a letter home as well. He wouldn't be able to have that argument like this. He wouldn't be able to remember all the reasons why and he would get snappish.

The rain was warm and just heavy enough that it soaked through his suit jacket. Will walked down toward the river, glamoured and moving fast. It was late and rainy but not enough of either to stop the people. The streets weren't quite empty. He passed police officers in bell shaped hats and urchin children in doorways without anywhere else to go. A pair of them huddled out of the rain, a boy and a girl, in the entrance to the storeroom of a closed bakery.

Will glanced down the dreary road and then leaned over them and drew a rune near the lock. He pushed it open a crack and continued on. The law was the law but he'd been that pitiful and hungry for just a few days on his trip from Wales to Institute as a child. A few days was enough to be memorable. He was invisible to them. It was just an improperly shut lock. No one had to know.

At the river side, Will looked down at the stinking Thames. Its surface was pocked with the rain that fell heavier now. He was wet and miserable.

"Must you wallow?" some voice in his head asked. It might have been Jem's but it wasn't something Jem would say. Magnus perhaps. Magnus would tell him that. So would Cecily if she knew but thankfully she didn't. Tessa was his secret. He knew. She knew. Magnus knew. How much he loved her was still a secret to everyone else. Some days he felt almost normal but those were the days where he managed to not see her. If he saw her, his heart all fell to pieces.

He whirled away from the river and took off at a run. He had nowhere to go but getting there as quickly as possible was suddenly essential. Any part of him that wasn't already drenched was soaked by the water spray from his feet pounding into the puddles in the cobbles. Filth and water and his hat was gone somewhere.

He rounded a corner and was brought up short by a glow. The street ahead of him was lit like a summer afternoon. He pushed his hair back with both hands and it slicked to his head before the rain started pushing it back towards his face again. Bright summer sunshine made him squint. The street ahead looked dry. Water streamed into his eyes as the sky opened up and he stared at this gap in the world.

The light was getting stronger. He pulled a blade out of a wrist sheath he had worn more out of habit than an expectation of running into trouble. It glinted where it was held low as he inched forward into the building light.

The street he had been able to make out details of a moment ago was being swallowed in light. Blurring and vanishing.

The light pushed towards him. Brighter and closer.

He adjusted his grip on his knife. He would have retreated if it hadn't happened so fast.

The light expanded.

It pressed in against him with a gentle weight like a heavy blanket.

It wrapped him up and swallowed him whole before he had a chance to move.

Then it winked out.

The London street was dark and wet again. The light, the dry street within it and the boy with the dripping hair were all gone. A passing carriage carrying a family home to their warm dry home trampled a gentleman's hat where it had rolled into a puddle.


	3. Getting Lost

 

Tessa had a plan but she looked up from it when Jem brushed his shoulder against her’s. Jem’s hand was warm when he reached out and took the piece of paper with the hotels and maps and transit routes all written out on it. She watched as he folded it and then tucked it into the pocket of his jeans. Every once in awhile she found herself surprised that he wore jeans and running shoes. He’d been a very proper gentleman once and in her mind’s eye she still saw him in starched collars and jackets not yellow t-shirts.

“Or we go that way,” he pointed past her shoulder at a high arched stone bridge that crossed the canal in front of the train station. There were stops for the water buses lined up along the edge of the water with their maps and their routes in bright colours. Modern ticket machines and vendors selling masks and trinkets completed the circus around the station. It marred the view of the little shops and restaurants across the water. The practicalities of the modern world getting in the way of the photo opportunity.

“I have to meet Nat at four,” she said.

“That’s,” he paused to check his watch and his hair fell into his eyes for a moment. She pushed it back, running the streak of silver between her fingers as he said, “Three hours. Three hours to go that way. Let’s get lost.”

Tessa was worried about Nat’s project, worried about working with the type of warlocks Nat might have found, worried about all the things she didn’t know. He didn’t give any hint that he could tell but here he was giving her exactly the kind of distraction she needed. Without saying it, he was telling her to let the work wait and take the time for something fun. Her smile got wider.

“You lead,” she said leaning close enough to bump her shoulder against his. He grinned back and pulled her forward and into the warren of twisting streets and little shops. They stopped at the top of the bridge and Jem leaned over to look at the canal below as the water bus they were meant to be on pulled into the stop. The water was opaque and greenish with little bits of trash floating by. It wasn’t quite the magic of a brochure.

Bridges always made her think of Jem. In a hundred and thirty six years, she hadn’t crossed a bridge without a flicker of thought turning to him. He turned back to her about to say something and she met whatever comment he was about to make with a kiss.

They’d come down from where the portal let them out just outside the Idris border by train. Tessa would be using magic to summon their luggage down later so for a few hours they had nothing but time and each other. Jem laced his fingers with hers and pulled her forward.

 

* * *

 

 

Tessa sat with her back to the sunshine and drank her coffee very slowly. Jem was talking about the strange mix of modernity and history in the city as he idly watched the people walking by. His tone of voice told her that he liked the city a lot.

He had his feet and their battered blue sneakers stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. He had worn those shoes on five continents so far. He was all long angles and Tessa caught other people looking. She didn’t blame them. She watched him more than anyone else did and didn’t think she’d ever tire of it.

He was kinetic today, sometimes he got so still it reminded her of his years as a Silent Brother but today he was all motion. He talked with his hands and his face was animated as he told her about a story he’d heard of a London shop that had been in the same place for more than 500 years.

She watched his eyes get drawn away and then they snapped back to her and she raised her eyebrows as she saw long legs and very short shorts pass them. She tilted her head to watch and the woman looked back briefly before she turned a corner with her friends.

“I think she liked you,” Tessa said leaning over the table like it was a secret to be whispered between school girls. Jem shook his head and waved it off. Just the hint of a blush. He never noticed. Ever.

The runes across his cheeks that he was so self conscious about did little to deter admirers and probably caught him just a touch more attention than he might otherwise find himself with. She wondered sometimes how many people had fallen in love with him while he wasn’t paying attention. Sophie had and there was a man who worked at the medical clinic where Jem volunteered who watched him in a way that wasn't just curiosity at having an ex-Silent Brother helping with diagnoses. When they’d met, Tessa had been the one who hadn’t noticed. She’d fallen hard and fast but had been so distracted by Will that she hadn’t even seen it.

“No, really, she did. Do you think I should get shorts like that?” she asked. She was teasing him and couldn’t keep the smile off her face and it ruined her attempt at a serious tone.

Above them a breeze ruffled the awning they sat beneath and Jem was cast in shadow for a moment while he tried to decide what to say to that comment. As the awning fell back into place and he sat in sunshine, he considered her with a much better serious expression. He steepled his fingers and looked at her over them.

“You can wear anything you like,” he said.

“Oh, I know, Mr. Politician,” she said still teasing. “I’m looking for an opinion not permission.”

“Then yes, in my opinion you should get shorts like that, though maybe not in such bright green,” he said and she laughed and added that detail to a mental list.

They left the coffee shop not long after that. Hand in hand, they wound back towards St. Marks square to walk by the Doge's Palace. The crowds got thicker and the languages mixed into that strange Tower of Babel drone that swirled around tourist sites. Tessa picked out German and English, French and Japanese, Arabic and Spanish, and of course Italian. A tour guide with a gaudy flower on a long pole trooped by leading a pack of teenagers in matching t-shirts declaring them members of some exchange program. June in St. Mark's square was not particularly restful.

Jem stopped in the flow of the traffic.

The man behind him knocked his shoulder and muttered a curse in a language that Tessa didn’t catch. She grabbed Jem's elbow and pulled him to the side. He blinked slowly at her. They stood in front of a shop selling Murano glass figurines that twinkled in a riot of colours beneath tiny spotlights. The crowd wove on around them, oblivious now that they were out of the flow.

“Jem?” she asked.

He had fallen still. All of his animation and energy drained away leaving him a statue. His eyes moved back and forth as though he were reading something confusing. She put a hand on his chest in part to get his attention and in part because the stillness was so complete it scared her. His heartbeat was fast but steady under her palm and he was warm. He felt normal. Her tension didn’t ease. The expression on his face wasn't normal.

“Jem?” she asked again.

“I don’t feel right,” he said.

“What do you need?” she asked.

He covered her hand with his own. She never thought of her hands as small until he had them in his. He brought their hands higher to rest at his collarbone. She found the place by touch and spread her palm against it and waited for him to calm.

The mixture of sadness and relief that washed through her was dizzying. Jem’s memories took him over sometimes. A memory would ricochet off of some tiny detail in a crowd or a shop window and suddenly he’d be swimming in things he hadn’t known he’d forgotten. He explained it sometimes once it had passed: the flashbacks and the emotions that overpowered the present moment with a rush of things long gone. The magics of the Silent Brothers had buried so much that even years after leaving them it could still take him over.

Beneath their hands was his parabatai rune. Grey and faded but never gone. Something had brought Will back to him with enough force to stagger him. She cupped his face with her other hand and he leaned towards her. She whispered to him, nothing important, just words to guide him back through his own memories to her. Little shared memories of the three of them. They stood like that as he came back to himself.

“That wasn’t normal,” he said in a low voice.

“Tell me,” she hadn’t let go of him yet and she wouldn’t until she was sure that he was feeling better.

“It felt right,” he said, “I don’t usually remember it like that. It’s usually not so physical. I felt it.”

She wrapped her arms around him and he stood in her embrace awkwardly for a moment before he returned it, looping his arms around her and holding on.

Later, when she left him at the hotel, he was still quiet. He was himself but not happy. Leaving him alone when he was like that was difficult but she’d promised Natasha that she wouldn’t be late.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he assured her that he was fine but there was something lost and empty about him. Against the bland colours and generic art of the hotel room, he seemed less like himself than an artist’s rendition of him. A rendition done by an artist who had never met him. She wanted to stay until the sparkling, joking Jem was back again but he insisted over and over that it wasn't necessary.

He almost had to push push her out the door but in the end she left him alone to disappear into his own memories. Her last glimpse of him before she closed the door was of him rubbing that gray mark with his palm.


	4. Very Wrong

The overwhelming pressure broke and nausea rolled through Will so strongly he had to catch the wall as he retched up the remains of his dinner. He looked down at the flagstones and swore.

The light was wrapped around him now. It was mid afternoon. It had to be mid afternoon. He shook rain water out of his hair and looked around. He was in a sunny square with little sets of tables set outside of wide awnings with placards hanging beside them. It was too clean and too warm to be London even if he didn’t know that it was well after sunset in London.

He turned in a slow circle.

The sun was warm and high. He'd stepped through some sort of portal and was somewhere else. He could estimate Europe by the architecture. Southern France perhaps? He let himself do some calculations, France wasn't too far away. It wouldn’t be too difficult to get home from France. If a little voice in his mind reminded him that it was night in France as well, he chose not to hear it.

He straightened his ruined jacket and considered his boots which were wet enough to squelch when he took a few steps out of the alley mouth he was standing in. He didn't sheathe his blade but he kept it tucked up in his sleeve where it wouldn't be visible to anything coming to see what had stepped through their trap.

In the middle of the square was a group of children playing a game. They kicked a ball and shouted to one another. Adults checked on them over their shoulders as they stood and talked in a loose knot nearby. Nobody wore anything that Will could consider fashion. Short pants on men, skirts that weren't just scandalously short but unreasonably so. He looked over each person in the square searching for some note of a themed party or some other explanation. No one was bothered.

"Perhaps not France," he said aloud trying to find something else to look at than that ridiculously large amount of skin.

A child in the middle of the game - wearing a boy's short pants and bare legs - stared at him. Long hair tied back with a purple band seemed to hint at the child being a girl but the fashion confused the impression. Will looked back at her. She left her friends and came towards him. He drew no other attention which meant he was still glamoured. She had the sight.

Will sheathed his blade entirely. She couldn't be a demon in broad daylight and he didn't really want to scare children by looking like a drowned rat and waving weaponry around. She had dark hair and light brown skin and frowned at him before saying something in a rapid fire tongue. Her shirt had the word principessa written across it in shimmering letters.

"Ne pas parlez francais," Will butchered the language. He knew he butchered the language but it had always seemed such a silly thing to try and learn. Jessamine had wanted to learn French and so Will had resisted it just to be difficult. He regretted that choice now. Two dialects of Purgatic, Sanskrit and Latin, Chinese and a decent amount of Greek and here he was incapable of asking for directions in French because he had thrown a tantrum when he was 14.

"I-ta-li-an-o," the child emphasized each syllable as though he were very stupid. Then he must appear very stupid, shouldn't he know which language to use when visiting a country?

"Ma-ca-ro-ni," Will said with the same exaggerated pronunciation because he didn't know a word of Italian. The child laughed at him and then said whatever she had said the first time slower and then mimed swimming.

"I did not go for a swim," he told her with a shrug. His eyes were scanning the crowd around him. Something had brought him here and he didn't want to be snuck up on if it decided to make an appearance. He pulled off his jacket and wrung it out. The shirt underneath clung uncomfortably and his feet were wet and he wanted to know what the hell was going on. All the surliness he had cultivated during his years of being cursed rose to the surface and he had to bite back nasty things that almost escaped from his mouth. The girl wouldn’t understand but that didn’t mean that it was proper to mouth off to her.

He was pulling his still wet jacket back on when the little girl's eyes grew round and looked at something over his shoulder. He grimaced and sighed before unsheathing both blades at his wrists and turning to look. He stepped out so that he was between the child and whatever made her whisper, "Mostro."

It was a warlock. He stood a little shorter than Will but had great arching batwings tucked in at his back. His face was pale and plain with reddish hair and brown eyes. He wore heavy blue trousers and a shirt with a symbol on the front. His eyes traveled over Will's soggy clothing and dripping hair and his lip very nearly curled in disgust.

Will's hair was long enough that it obscured his neck and he twisted his right hand so that the voyance rune was out of the warlock's line of site. He wouldn't be immediately identifiable as Nephilim if the warlock didn't know exactly what he was looking for.

"Welcome to Venice," the warlock said in English and Will would have been grateful for it if there’d been space in his black mood for gratefulness.

"Thank you," Will kept himself between the warlock and the girl though he didn't find Batwings to be much of a threat. He managed to temper the sarcasm a little when he asked, "Do you happen to know how I got to be in Venice?"

"You stepped through a portal," the warlock told him.

"That's very descriptive and detailed information," Will sneered. "Thank you for clarifying."

"You need to come with me, we'll help you get home," he said reaching out a hand as though he were going to help Will into some nonexistent carriage. Nothing about him was reassuring and Will could feel the prickle of magic in the air.

“There is nothing to be worried about,” the warlock said. Will’s sense of unease sharpened. It wasn’t just being treated like a mundane, there was something about the warlock that made him worry. He glanced down at the girl but she had already scampered back to her parents and was trying to tell them what she had seen in the alley. She stamped her tiny feet and pulled on her mother's wrist and pointed but the adults could see nothing. That was good considering what he intended to do next.

"I don't think I believe you, but I do thank you for the offer of assistance," Will said pleasantly.

The warlock frowned and his wings flexed. It was a more obvious tell than a poker player with an itchy nose. Will didn't attack though a part of him wanted to. A fight with this many mundanes around would be a terrible idea. There would be collateral damage he would never be able to justify to the Clave. He turned and ran. His squelching boots were going to leave blisters the size of small countries but he was still a Shadowhunter and he was fast.

Venice was a city of canals but the first few alleys he wove through were blessedly without dead ends nor drops into water. He did not want to get wetter than he already was.

He dashed over a footbridge and stepped into a tiny shop on the other side selling brightly coloured satchels and bags. It smelled of leather and soap. He glanced out the glass in the door and watched for pursuit. The clerk in the shop looked confused but didn't see him. She had a little square of something in her hand and her attention dropped back to it.

Once he was sure that the warlock had lost him he glanced around the shop and looked up at the bright lanterns set in the ceiling. They looked like witchlight but brighter. He frowned at them and considered removing the glamour to ask the shop girl what they were. Henry would have stopped but Will had more pressing concerns like being stranded in a foreign country without money or assistance. He was going to end up sleeping in a doorway like those poor children back in London.

He looked up at the odd lamps one last time and then stepped back into the street where Italians apparently wore as little clothing as they could. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen that much of another person’s body. He knew he had never seen that much of a woman’s body as much as he might pretend otherwise.

His glamour rendered him invisible but if he needed to remove it, he would immediately stand out in this crowd. He tried not to look at the people. Skin everywhere and hairstyles that were bizarre. In a window of a shop selling glass and jewelry and lit by that same strange too-bright light, he caught sight of his hair drying to an unruly mass and grimaced at it.

Italy was close to Idris. Perhaps he could lie his way onto a train and get through the mountains. From Alicante it wasn't so difficult to get back to London. He was lost in these thoughts when his path opened out to a pedestrian road that ran parallel to a wide canal filled with boats. There were the gondolas and row boats he had expected but a steamboat pulled into a wide covered metal dock labeled in yellow and black and something about it caught his attention.

There was something wrong with it. It unloaded passengers and reloaded new ones and it pulled away from the dock. A ferry. Not so unusual in a city full of canals. But the size and the shape and the lack of funnel or waterwheel or sail was wrong. A smaller boat pushed by a tiny engine on the back swerved out from the moorings at the edge of the walkway. Engines were not that small, not unless they ran on magic and being so close to Idris made Northern Italy one of the most mundane places in the world. Downworld avoided living in the Shadowhunter’s back garden. They certainly wouldn’t be out in public with enchanted engines this close to the border.

Now that the sense of unease was there his mind started to assemble the picture.

There was no one wearing proper clothing. It wasn't a quirk of the city or the country. A group of young women walked by him speaking in American accents and he knew that American girls didn't dress like that. The strange lights were in every shop. There were shops selling things he didn't recognize. He hadn't looked closely but now he did, going back and really looking. The music coming from the cafe he had passed wasn't coming from a band he couldn't see in the back. There were advertisements and signs that featured such accurate depictions of people they couldn’t be either paintings or daguerreotypes.

He saw a large photo frame in the wall of a public house where the pictures moved. He walked right up to it and touched the glass and it felt smooth and normal but while his hand was there the image switched to show a man in an unfashionable but appropriate suit who spoke in Italian. Will stumbled back from it and bumped into a table where the two patrons looked up from their sloshed drinks and glared but still couldn’t see him. The frame was not a window but he checked anyway before moving back into the road.

He found an empty bit of wall and leaned back so that he had the security of warm stone behind him. He took long, slow breaths.

Something was very, very wrong. 

 

* * *

 

As night approached, Will found a tall thin building to break into and made his way to the rooftop. He was able to look down over the city as night fell. There were parts of the streets that were lit as bright as they had been below the late afternoon sun and others disappeared into twisting shadows.

He sat in the sun and ate a plate of stolen pasta that he had simply lifted from the tray of a very confused waiter. It tasted good if a little too garlicky. The plate balanced on his knee and he ate with stolen cutlery as he sat so he could see both the street below and the entrance to the apartment block beside him. He watched the gas lamps below him flick on without anyone to light them. They didn't glow with a lantern flame, they glared with that sharp blue white light he'd seen in the stores. It was not witchlight but that was the closest approximation he had.

He had spent the afternoon collecting wrongness.

There was a lot to find. He was not anywhere near home but as far as he could tell it was all mundane. There was no magic in those lights be it angelic, demonic or otherwise. The growling engines in the boats that puttered by in the canal below him did not run on steam but neither did they run on magic. It might have been easier to understand if it were magic. If he wasn’t half convinced he’d crossed into a demonic dimension, he might have made notes for Henry.

Will pulled open a few buttons on his shirt which had dried stiff but it had survived the rain better than either his shoes or his trousers. He put his hand over the rune on his chest but didn't look for a long time. The pasta congealed on the roof ledge in front of him before he opened his eyes and found the parabatai rune where it had always been and as it always been. Black and strong against his skin.

"Where the hell are you?" he asked Jem though he knew there was no way for Jem to hear him.

"Where the hell am I?" he wondered aloud because if the rune was still there, Jem was still there and if Jem was still there, he hadn't crossed into some demon realm. He hadn’t died and gone to the strangest version of hell imaginable.

He watched the sun sink down in a blaze of yellow and orange with his hand over that space on his chest. It wasn't until night had fallen completely that he stood, leaving his dinner for whatever chose to find it, and went to find a corner that was defensible enough that he could sleep.

 

* * *

 

It was the sound of scrabbling claws that woke Will from his doze. He snapped up, disoriented but awake. The night was not dark. The lights below made it easy enough to see. He still scrawled a night vision rune into his arm as he climbed silently to his feet. The shadows that the street lamps could not chase away resolved into lines and shapes and then objects. The door, the ledge, the vents, the thing that looked like a shallow metal bowl aimed at the sky, all these things were visible but none of them explained the noise.

He silently cursed himself for not bringing more weapons when he'd left the Institute. He had only two short knives in his wrist sheathes. He traded the stele for one and left his other hand free so that he could climb up onto the enclosure where the door let out and get a better look around.

Nothing.

The noise of claws on stone came again and he whirled toward it to find nothing but shadows. Will closed his eyes and listened. It wasn't late, he'd barely had a chance to do more than doze and the sounds of the street below were the first thing he heard. Conversations, music from somewhere, water, footsteps. He cleared everything else out of his mind. He pushed out the thoughts of Jem and the worries about half naked people wandering the streets as though it were normal and how one got out of Italy without mundane money. He pushed out the thoughts of Tessa that were never far away.

He listened.

The scrape of claws came again and this time when he moved, he moved sure and fast. The thing that scraped its talons over the centuries old stone on the roof top was more shadow than form but runed daggers were almost as effective as seraph blades. Will was swinging both knives by the time he got close to it and the blades bit into flesh that swirled in an absence of light.

It shrieked and lashed out with front paws. Will caught a glimpse of red eyes as he rolled away, still slashing. Some of what he hit was just shadow. He struck muscle on what might have been a hind leg. Dog like. It was dog like when it lunged at him with its jaw wide and its eyes like glowing blood pools. It was less dog like as it exploded into black mist and ichor.

Will swore at the mess as the demon vanished.

He was climbing back to his feet when the next one hit him in the shoulder and sent him spinning back to the ground. He got a dagger up but dropped it when teeth closed on his forearm. His last thoughts were scrambled as venom of some sort caused his head to spin. Stabbing with the second knife he caught the thing in it's shoulder but it wasn't a killing blow.

He lost consciousness as red eyes hovered above him. 


	5. Stormbreaker

Tessa's thoughts were still on Jem as she followed Natasha through the streets. Natasha was all bright energy and orange hair. She was excited about the project though she was extremely cagey with details. She didn’t want to give anything away as though it were a surprise gift.

“Just wait until you meet Dmitri, he’s incredible,” Natasha had said as she took Tessa’s arm and hurried her along. It had led to teasing about what incredible meant that left Natasha blushing in a way that was more bashful than Tessa ever imagined her to be.

They'd met at the train station just as the sun started to sink and now they passed through deepening shadows as the sun lit the sky above them in oranges and pinks. The glimpses of the canals reflecting sunset were heart-stopping and crossing one foot bridge, Tessa did stop to stare out at it.

Venice was a fantasy city.

Natasha led her away from that fantasy ideal and into the parts of the city that were all crumbling grandeur. They stopped at a boarded up church. Natasha struck an infomercial pose and Tessa raised both eyebrows at her. It was a huge structure made of white stone and rising to a dome that had once been painted white but was now peeling. A pair of angels stood over the doors their faces had been worn down and their robes were dirt streaked.

"This is it?" Tessa asked.

"This is headquarters," Nat said. She'd been talking the entire time. She had told Tessa about the warlock team that was working on the project, about her newest boyfriend, about her apartment in Moscow - a city she'd vowed once to never return to. She told her everything but what the project actually was, claiming it needed to be seen to be explained.

"Is it structurally sound?" Tessa asked tilting her head back to take in the massive facade. It was impressive and Tessa tried to imagine how it had looked in its heyday when it had been brand new and Venice had been the seat of culture and trade for half the Mediterranean.

"Don't be a ninny, of course it is structurally sound," Natasha said. Nat had learned English decades before and she'd spent months working on idioms and figures of speech that she couldn't shake now. She still spoke with slang that had started going out of fashion in the 1930s.

They didn't enter through the grand front doors. They were sealed shut. Instead, Natasha led the way into a deeply shadowed alley where Tessa had to keep her eyes down to step around puddles and rubbish that had gathered in the narrow space. A slogan was sprayed across the wall in red paint but it was so slang-laden that Tessa couldn't decipher it even though she spoke passable Italian. The side door of the church swung open to spill yellow electric light into the narrow space.

Inside smelled of damp and the white paint on the walls was stained yellow in some places with water damage. The light came from uncovered bulbs set in intervals along the ceiling and they cast harsh light. Tessa followed Natasha down the hall to a set of double doors that she assumed led to the nave. This space was all offices, some still had their labels in place on the doors. They passed a bulletin board with a poster up with bible study times from the 1950s listed in faded careful handwriting.

Pushing into the nave Tessa was momentarily struck by the size of the place. It was far larger than she had thought. The dome rose high above them and a marble floor stretched out in all directions. No longer polished and shining as it must have been once but it was still impressive beneath a layer of grime. Jesus still hung from the cross over the altar though someone had given him a hat and a scarf. All the stained glass windows were covered from the outside to prevent them from being broken. It had even worked in a few places. All other evidence that this space had been a church and been stripped away and piled in the corners.

"Stormy!" a voice called.

Tessa was smiling before she'd turned all the way around. The warlock who wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted was smaller than she was but still strong enough to get her off her feet. He had that corn-fed blustery look about him that screamed "farm boy" though he held an advanced degree in obscure poetry and would probably have difficulty differentiating horses from cows without a diagram. His eyes were round as tennis balls and almost as large. They were also sky blue from lid to lid. He grinned with teeth that had obviously had expensive meetings with orthodontics in their youth.

"Frankie," she said when he dropped her back on the ground. His name was Charles Hamilton. Like Stormy, Frankie was a nickname. He was named for some singer who had been known as Old Blue Eyes. Tessa had missed most of the pop-culture from that era and always mixed up which one.

"How are you darling, still in that smelly old Labyrinth?" Frank asked in a British accent that was best described as posh.

"Not these days," she said. "What are you doing in Italy? I thought civilized people didn't cross the channel."

"Expanding my horizons, I have this ancient friend who tells me that the world is too big to spend your life in one city," he said.

"Ancient?" she said smiling. Frank was young by warlock standards - less than 50 - and had had the most atypical of warlock upbringings. No attempted drownings, no attempted exorcisms, lots of toys, braces, a university education. His parents had been solidly upper class and had always ignored the weird things that happened around him and pretended that the eyes were just a quirk. He still visited his mother at Christmas and Easter.

"Ah, the Stormbreaker, over a hundred years old but not ancient," he said.

"I'm not ancient," she said. She had spent time with warlocks well over 500. She knew a few who had seen a millennium turn though none of them were particularly well adjusted any more. That Frank still thought a century was old was quaint and she resisted the urge to pat his cheek and say something condescending.

Frank had an arm around her shoulder and was drawing her farther into the church. The pews had all been stacked against the walls, except for one that someone had dragged free and was sleeping on with a sweater draped over their horned head. The space was full of folding tables. Papers and books were stacked in haphazard piles. Computer screens blinked. At the back, near the doors that she had seen from the outside were large spell circles carved into the floor. They shimmered but the magic wasn't doing much more than hovering over the lines in the stone like low lying fog.

"Does the consecrated ground affect the spells?" she asked trying to reopen the question of what the hell was going on.

"Deconsecrated church, doesn't matter," Natasha said.

"So are you going to tell me what it does?" she asked.

The answer was interrupted by a man with massive bat wings stomping in from another door on the other side of the building. Both Natasha and Frankie turned to look. He was plain looking except for the wings and the scowl. His wings stretched and snapped back in a motion that reminded Tessa of someone clenching their fists or perhaps a cat's swishing tail.

"Where's the Arrival?" Natasha asked.

"Chauncey and Elsa are out looking for him," the warlock growled and turned on Tessa with a cold look, "Are you Natasha's oh so useful friend? The Stormbreaker."

The contempt he put onto the name might have been offensive if Tessa didn't agree that it was absurd. She pulled up a smile and tilted her head to the side as though considering him carefully. It was a look she'd stolen from Will more than a century before. He used to use it in Clave meetings because it was not actually mocking but it was so very close.

"Tessa is fine. Nobody but this lot," she waved her hand at Natasha and Frankie, "has called me Stormbreaker in 30 years. It was a brand name back when the market at La Miroir was going through a theme park stage. Marcelline thought dramatic names would drum up business."

"Is it true?" the warlock said without introducing himself.

"That Marcelline thought nicknames would bring in business? Yes, she did think that,” Tessa said and the scowl deepened. She sighed and answered the question he had meant to ask, “I can track a spell back to the caster," she said. "It is imperfect but yes, I am a breaker, that’s true."

Among warlocks there are only a very few things considered to be impossible and to be a true spell breaker was one of them. Tessa watched the skepticism cross his face. Her smile widened but it also got colder. Next would come the demand for proof.

She had had this conversation many times since she'd discovered by accident in 1917 that the magic that allowed her to find the spark of ownership in an object and change into another person could also be used on spells.

She'd held a music box in her hand and reached for the change and found something different. She hadn't found a spark of ownership. She had found a glowing filament that traced back to the owner of a spell that had been cast on the box long ago. The spell hadn’t been anything dangerous. It simple changed the song that the box played depending on who was holding it. She had seen much more dangerous magics since.

It had taken years to learn how to use it but she had found eventually that if she followed that filament far enough back she could snap it. Once it had been snapped, the spell broke. It was impossible magic for anyone else. She didn’t advertise it much these days. Like the details of her ability to Change, she kept it a near secret.

"Prove it," the warlock said.

"Travis, she can do it," Natasha said. "Would I lie to you?"

"I want to see," he crossed the room and picked up a metal sphere from a cluttered table. Some of the instruments were things that Tessa recognized but many of them were arcane and indecipherable. There were devices that could track magical fields. These looked like dowsing rods with extra prongs. A compass with a heavy brass case that she knew could be use to measure the strength of a spell sat beside a tall thing with the glass balls hanging on long strings that was completely new to her.

Travis handed her the ball and she looked away from the collection to hold it up in the light and get a good look. Plain, silver, a seam running around the middle and it was heavier than it should have been for its size. She passed it hand to hand a few times and considered how much to show off. Travis was looking at her with his eyebrow up and that little sneer tilting the corner of his lip. Superiority and arrogance in every line of his face.

He was just asking for the show.

She smiled in spite of her mood.

When she'd been working at the market she'd been told to make magic a show because it would keep people coming back. That La Miroir had a larger mundane clientele than they let on was a big part of that. Tessa’s years in the Clave often left her with a deep unease about using magic among mundanes but the years in La Miroir had been part of one of her more rebellious stages and the risk had almost been a a relief after years of doing as the Clave said.

She held the ball between her hands and reached into it with magic. Once this had felt like groping in the dark but now it was as easy as opening a cupboard. She found the spark of ownership first but she bypassed that without looking at it too closely and reached farther. In the space where the magic opened up there was a buzz. Bespelled objects sometimes vibrated hard enough that even unskilled warlocks or even humans with the Sight could feel it.

Tessa followed the buzz until she found the thin gold line. She smiled again. Sometimes she could tell what the magic did but in this case she couldn't. The line wound and twisted through the ball, a complicated spell involving whatever substances swished about inside. It looped but she traced along it like untangling a knot or completing a children's maze. When she found the point beyond the object itself where it stretched tight she snapped it.

It had only taken a few seconds. The magic finished, she dropped the expression off her face and drew herself to her full height. Very slowly her head tilted to one side and she widened her eyes.

Stormbreaker was a stupid nickname but she'd brought it upon herself with this trick. She used a glamour and her century's worth of remembered changes and altered only her eyes. Jet black, flashing to white like a lightning strike and then roiling through gray as she used a simple levitation spell to push her hair back and up as changed it from brown to gray then white as though the colour were being pushed out of it from her forehead back as it swirled around her head. It was useless but it looked impressive.

She dropped all the glamour and held the ball out.

There was a stunned moment. Travis stared with an uneasy look in his eyes as though afraid something terrible would happen if he took the ball from her. She smiled as sweetly as she could, "It's done."

Natasha snorted and Frank started to laugh and a moment later he was leaning against Tessa's shoulder and laughing hard enough that his shoulders shook. Travis took the ball and looked at the three of them with dawning anger that he was being messed with.

"You should have seen your face," Natasha said to Travis before turning to Tessa, "Do it again, only do the hair in pink this time!"

"No, I am not a performing monkey," Tessa said but she couldn't not smile. Natasha thought the changing was a cute trick, just another glamour. Tessa had tried to tell her that it was so much more than that but Natasha wasn’t particularly fond of what she did not understand so she simply pretended it didn’t exist.

Travis was glaring but he no longer seemed particularly threatening. The storm cloud eyes was a parlour trick and that it had worked on him made him seem even younger than Tessa had expected considering the way he behaved as though her were the supreme leader of the group. It could be hard to guess a warlock's age but she guessed he was no older than Natasha. He was certainly shy of his first century.

He looked down at the ball in his hand and shook it. A moment later he shook it harder. Whatever it was meant to do, it didn't do it.

"Now will you tell me what all this is for?" Tessa asked waving a hand at the room.

“There’s a portal,” Natasha said her face lit up, she’d been waiting to explain it. She grabbed Tessa’s arm and hauled her forward to stand nearer the glowing circles at the back of the room. The one on the left shimmered in blue while the other winked from yellow to lime green and back again. Natasha wasn’t looking at them, she was looking at a pair of maps spread across the tables.

They were massive and Tessa’s sense of familiarity as she looked them over didn’t settle into recognition until she tracked the river past Black Friar’s bridge. It was a map of London. The other was a map of Venice.

“The portal is picking people up here,” Nat tapped London, “and dropping them here,” she tapped Venice.

“That’s how I got here,” Tessa said looking between the maps for the trick that would explain why this warranted a team of seven warlocks and enough magical paraphernalia to open a store. After the show and the fit laughter, all the warlocks were watching Tessa as Nat grinned at her.

“But you came from today,” Natasha said. “The portal isn’t so … particular. It brings people from all over history.”

“It’s a time travel portal?” Tessa asked. “Why would you do that? How would you do that? Warlocks have tried to play with time for centuries, it never ends the way people want it to.”

“We’re not doing it,” Frankie said, just a little offended.

“Where are the people?” Tessa asked. Nat’s face fell as though that wasn’t the response she wanted to hear.

“They’re from all over the last 500 years or so,” Frankie said.

“No, where are they? Where are the people?” Tessa asked looking around the room full of warlocks. The audience had drawn in a little closer. None of them looked like they had come from some point 500 years earlier. They wore modern clothing and they were young. All of them were young. Tessa wasn’t sure she’d even seen this many young warlocks in one place. She certainly wasn’t used to being the oldest immortal in a room.

“Upstairs,” Travis said with a shrug. He still held the ball and watched Tessa warily as though she were something dangerous.

“Can I meet them?” Tessa asked. “Are they mundanes or Downworlders? What are you going to do with them?”

“Always with the questions,” Natasha said shaking her head.

“Always with the non-answers,” Tessa was exasperated enough that it was coming through in her voice. She had to catch herself before she exclaimed, by the Angel instead it came out as, “My goodness, Nat. This isn’t a small thing. You have people here. What did you tell them?”

“That we’re trying to help them,” Natasha said. Tessa wasn’t sure what expression was on her face but it certainly wasn’t friendly. Natasha was defensive when she added, “Which is true. We are trying to help them. That’s why you’re here. You’re going to do your tracking thing and find the source of the spell and we’ll be able to turn the spell around. It’ll be fine.”

“Introduce me,” Tessa said.

“No,” Travis said.

Tessa was about to start an argument when a commotion at the side door pulled everyone’s attention. A black shadow came through the door as it opened and everyone took an instinctive step back from it as it flashed red eyes.

Everyone but Travis. Travis cooed at it.

“Who’s a good girl?” he asked as it slunk towards him looking nothing like a good girl and everything like a hell demon. It swirled around his legs and nearly obscured him completely for a moment in a mass of black and red menace that he seemed not to see.

Tessa tried for something more articulate but only succeeded in saying, “The fuck?”

“Elsa where is Chauncey?” Travis asked the mass of shadow.

“Are you telling me that Elsa and Chauncey are Hellhounds?” Tessa asked her voice more incredulous than anything else. “You sent Hellhounds after someone who just stepped through a time travel portal? Worse than that, you sent Hellhounds out into a mundane city at dusk? How many people has Elsa eaten do you think?”

“Tessa, let it go,” Natasha’s voice was low and urgent and Tessa let herself be dragged away to the side door because she needed a moment to collect herself.

Neither of them spoke as they walked down the hallway. The yellowed tile was smeared with red where someone had bled on it and then it had been tracked around. Tessa could see drag marks as well as footprints and her stomach turned a little. She looked around trying to figure out which door they had taken the prisoner through. There were two with bloody hand prints and she filed that information away but suppressed the urge to react before she had a plan.

“I shouldn’t have invited you, I’m sorry I got you involved in this, you probably shouldn’t come back. Travis will tell Dmitri that you’re a problem and you don’t want to be here when he comes looking for you,” Natasha said.

“No, Nat, you shouldn’t have gotten involved in this,” Tessa said. “This isn’t going to end well for anyone at all, least of all, you.”

“Don’t come back, Tess, I’m sorry, I am,” Natasha said just before she pushed Tessa out the door. Before she could get her bearings and argue the door slammed shut and she was left her in the dark graffitied alleyway behind the church alone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, that's the same Marcelline and the same La Miroir that showed up in passing in Infernal War.
> 
> One of my great pet-peeves with the TID books is that they never really get a chance to delve into Tessa's abilities but hint that she is more powerful than we learn of in the story. One of the things I really enjoyed in putting this story together was the chance to explore that. Tessa as I write her in this story is a seriously powerful warlock - with a bit of a reputation to precede her - and that's a lot of fun to write.


	6. Sitting Still

Tessa was furious by the time she made it back to the hotel. She pushed her way into the room by way of a muttered spell after the key card failed twice. She slammed the offending bit of plastic down on the little table by the door and kicked off her shoes. She had every intention of launching into a explanation of why everyone in that church was an idiot and exactly what they had done to earn that label.

But then she saw Jem.

He looked up at her with a mild and curious expression. His eyebrows just slightly raised and a tiny smile lifting one corner of his lips. That wasn’t the problem. The thing that made her stop before she’d said a single word was that he was sitting in the same place he’d been when she’d left him hours before. His shoes were still on.

“James?” she said. Everything else had disappeared.

“It didn’t go well?” his voice was so normal it almost convinced her not to worry but he didn’t move. He still sat in that same position as though he’d been turned to stone.

“They’re idiots,” she said because she thought maybe playing along with his little charade of normalcy might help he come back to it. All her rage was gone. She let any last pieces of it go as she was crossing the room to him.

She touched his hair first brushing it away from his forehead with just her finger tips because touching him more than that felt like an invasion when he was this quiet. It was soft as down in her fingers. The familiarity of it made her bolder. He watched her as she ran her knuckles down from his temples to his jaw. He’d lost any of that child’s softness that had still lingered when she’d known him during their adolescence. He’d never stopped being the kind of beautiful that was delicate and gentle but there was nothing feminine in the lines of his face.

“Something is wrong,” she said once she’d caught his face between her hands and tilted it up so she could see his eyes.

“It’s nothing. It’s only that the past is strong here,” he said. Everything Natasha had said to her that evening came back to her. He was more right than he knew but she wasn’t going to bring up something like that until she understood why he was so unhappy. Then again, she already knew.

“This is about Will,” she said.

He was silent for a very long time and she waited. His hands came up and he held her wrists where her hands were still cupped around his cheeks. His eyes had fallen shut and his breathing slowed. She waited for the thoughts to work their way through his mind. He was razer sharp. Quick thinking and more intelligent that just about anyone else she knew but when the past got in the way like this he needed time.

The Silent Brothers saw the lines of the world laid out before them. Jem claimed it was often through a fog but they could still make out the shapes. From the deaths and births to the rises and falls of empires, they saw it all. They saw it change and shift. He had always been weaker than some of them but Jem had been a part of that. He could no longer see any of it but the memory of that knowledge still filled his mind sometimes. She had learned to give him the space he needed to think it through.

“It hasn’t gone,” he said his eyes still shut and his hands still holding hers in place.

She stepped in closer as he went quiet again. A little twitch of a smile escaped the mask when she nudged his knee and he moved it so she could stand between his legs. He didn’t open his eyes but his hands released her wrists and looped around her waist instead. The smile was small and faraway but it stayed in place.

“I can feel him. Properly. I can feel him the way I used to. I’d thought I remembered what the parabatai bond felt like but I was wrong. I’d forgotten what it really meant. It feels different than I imagined and exactly like I’d forgotten. But that doesn’t make sense does it?” he said.

“I know what you mean. I’m almost as old as you are,” she smiled at that, as though the few months he was older than her mattered when your lives spanned more than a century. “I know what it’s like to forget that you’ve ever known things, to lose entire pieces of who you used to be to time, to lose details that don’t matter like Sophie’s last name and details that do like the way her voice sounded when she was telling me off. I had forgotten once what it meant to love someone with every part of myself. I thought I knew what that meant but I didn’t really remember it until you came home to me. I understand Jem, I do.”

“I’m sure if I close my eyes and turn around he’ll be there. It is utter madness,” Jem’s voice was almost a whisper and he muffled it further by pulling her in and pressing his face into her stomach. It was a childlike gesture and she smoothed his hair and rubbed his back as though he were that long lost little boy who’d had his childhood ripped out from under him at eleven years old.

“I’ve been afraid, and this is madness as well, I know that it is. I’ve been afraid that if I move or talk or jostle the memory at all, I’ll lose it again,” Jem spoke into her blouse and he dropped his voice another level. She doubted that she had actually heard it when he said, “Bloody hell but I miss him.”

“You can’t spend your life sitting still,” she told him, “Trust me on that one.”

“You were angry, why?” he said still speaking to a spot just below her ribs as she played with his hair. She found that silver streak that reminded her of the boy he had been so very long ago and ran it through her fingers. Jem had learned to live without his other piece but it wasn’t easy.

“Natasha has idiot friends, utter morons,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about them right now.”

“I’d like to know what’s going on,” Jem said in that mild inarguable voice he had. Gentle and kind and impossible to ignore but then that was how she always thought of Jem.

She put her hand on his shoulder where the parabatai rune lay hidden by his shirt and let herself think the thought she had been pretending did not exist. She dropped down beside him on the edge of the bed and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She could see the appeal of sitting here and holding onto the maybe.

“There’s a portal,” she said, “It is dropping people here in the city and they can’t figure out who is casting it or why. They sent a pair of hellhounds after a person who fell through this afternoon. It came waltzing back into their headquarters like calling up animalistic demons was just something people did on Tuesday afternoons. It’s not just that it’s against the Law. It’s just plain stupid. This is how people get killed. They wouldn’t let me see any of the arrivals. They kicked me out when I had the audacity to get angry that they were releasing demons into the streets of a mundane city.”

“And the part you’re leaving out?” he asked and she smiled because of course he would be able to tell.

She looked at him and his eerie stillness. It was his Silent Brother stillness that so deeply unnerved her because it left her feeling like she was losing him again. She considered lying because it wasn’t a thought he should be dwelling on when he was like this. They had spent so much time lying to protect one another when they were young and she didn’t want to go back to that.

“It’s time travel portal,” she said.

He smiled like she’d told a bad joke, “Time travel is impossible. I was a Silent Brother for more than a century. We tracked time. Time is a wheel but it can never return to where it has been.”

“They’re pretty sure,” she said as she explained the rest of what she knew. She used the word ‘prisoner’ where Natasha had used ‘arrival’.

“It could be an elaborate hoax,” he said.

Tessa was surprised at herself for not having thought of that herself. She was usually cynical enough to expect the worst but she had taken Natasha’s assertion that it was a time travel portal at face value. It went deeper than Natasha’s conviction. It had everything to do with that thought she kept pretending she wasn’t thinking. She wanted it to be true.

“Then why are they keeping it such a secret? Why risk raising demons and using magic like this so close to Idris if it wasn’t for a good reason?” she asked.

Jem raised his eyebrows in a question. There must have been something in her voice, some expression that had betrayed that buried thought. She shook her head, “I can’t even think it. I can’t.”

“Ok,” he said. Like the blue sneakers the little modern phrase seemed out of step with who she thought he was and yet it fit.

“We’re going to have to do something,” she said with her eyes shut as she leaned against him.

“Call the Clave?” he asked.

“I’d rather not,” she said. Jem trusted the Clave in a way that she couldn’t. His faith in the organization wasn’t blind or unshakable but it was still stronger than hers which was nonexistent. “These people are my friends and they’re so young. I don’t think they have any idea what they’re involved with. I won’t throw Frankie and Nat to the council. Nat’s past couldn’t stand up to that kind of scrutiny and Frankie couldn’t handle it at all. They’d end up arrested and at the very least locked up somewhere.”

“We can’t walk away,” he said.

“I know that,” she said. “We need to get those people out of there if nothing else.”

Jem looked at her and the thing they weren’t saying passed between them again but it stayed silent.

He finally moved to sit up against the headboard so she could snuggle into him a little closer as they talked. They planned. She talked through what she had seen of the church and Jem asked the questions that proved he was better at tactical thinking than she was. They were still wrapped up in each other as they made the phone calls that would get them enough support to do what they need to do.

“Magnus claims that Dmitri might be a Zakarov,” Tessa said when she hung up the phone. “Apparently he has been sniffing around every rumour of time travel magic in the last half a century. Something happened in Melbourne but Magnus doesn’t know what only that a Zakarov was involved and people died.”

“You say Zakarov like that should mean something,” Jem said.

“The Zakarov siblings, there’s a boy and a girl, are better than a thousand years old. They’re warlock legends. I would have said they were myth but Magnus said he met the sister once. They were supposed to be there at the fall of Constantinople and or maybe they caused the fall of Rome itself, depends on the story,” Tessa said waving her hands.

“Oh and they worked with the magic divisions of the Nazi party and they’re behind the Faerie Wars of the 1200s. They’re like bogeymen for warlock fairy tales. We tell the young ones that the Zakarovs will come and get them if they use dark magics. It’s all bollocks and hearsay,” Tessa explained.

“Or perhaps all the stories are true,” Jem said.

“Perhaps we should sleep,” Tessa said. “I don’t want to infiltrate the headquarters of a psychopathic ancient warlock without being rested.”

It was early morning, sometime before dawn but only just. The planning had taken most of night. Tessa was as comfortable as she could be with a plan that included so many uncontrollable details, like Natasha, and had been drafted via long distance phone calls and guesswork.

“I don’t know that I could sleep,” Jem said.

“Come to bed with me anyways. Take off your shoes, have a cup of tea, tell me again that this is going to work,” she said.

Tessa used a spell to make the tea appear so they wouldn’t have to call room service or leave to get it. She didn’t bother with pajamas and just kicked off clothing until she sat in the middle of the bed wearing a tank top and a pair of underwear with the cup of tea wrapped in her hands. She hadn’t intended more than getting comfortable in the most efficient manner possible but Jem gave her a smile that said he took it as more than that.

The smile didn’t fall away as he kicked off his shoes and almost as much clothing as she had left on the floor. He sat behind her and pulled her in close so they were skin to skin.

They were silent as she drank her tea and he ran his fingers up and down her arms. She was half asleep when he finally took the cup away from her and put it beside the one he hadn’t touched on the little side table. She couldn’t see him where he sat behind her but she was surrounded by the warmth of him. He buried his face in the crook of her neck for a moment.

“Can I say it aloud?” he asked.

“Are you sure you want to?” she asked.

“Are you afraid that it’s true or that it’s not?” he said.

“Yes, I’m afraid of both of those things,” she said cuddling back into his chest a little more. He held her tighter.

She slowed her breathing to match his and tried to find some artificial version of his unshakable calm. Once she was paying attention, she could feel the anxiety running through him. It just ran quieter in him than it did for her. It was there in the tension in his chest, the way his fingers trembled just a fraction, even his heart beating too fast for how still he was.

“Tell me,” she said with her eyes shut and her heart in her throat.

“Will is here somewhere,” he said and a flash of blood smeared hallway filled her vision and turned her stomach harder in recollection than it had at the moment.

“Tess,” Jem said uncurling her fingers and turning her to look at him. His fingers were on her face and she opened her eyes to find his only inches away. Dark brown, warm as a summer afternoon and sprinkled with both silver and gold if she took the time to look. She took the time until she could think straight again.

Speaking the thought aloud required closing her eyes and clearing her thoughts but she finally whispered, “He’ll be ok. If,” the words died and she had to fight to pull them back together again but she still couldn’t force her mouth to form the shape of his name. Her voice was small when she continued, “If he is here, we’ll find him.”

For a long time, Jem was right and though they turned out the lights and wrapped themselves in blankets and each other, they didn’t sleep. In the morning, Tessa would still be able to hear the melody Jem was humming to himself when she fell asleep. It was a song of training rooms and circles of fire, of battles and love and little boys tying their lives together. The last time she’d heard it had been one of the hardest days of her life.

She finally let his name out as she fell asleep, “Will.”


	7. Fire

It was just before dawn when Jem and Tessa walked by the church. There hadn’t been much sleep the night before and it was still before dawn when Tessa declared that they needed to do something. Her head had been against his shoulder and the warmth and nearness of her had kept his heart rate in check until she whispered, “Are you asleep?”

“No,” he told the top of her head. They had been lying in bed for a little better than an hour. Tessa had murmured Will’s name before she’d dozed off and Jem hadn’t been able to sleep at all. He kept worrying at the newly recovered parabatai connection. They had done the same thing when they’d first completed the ritual. They’d played little games to figure out how to use this new sense of another person. It wouldn’t tell him where Will was but it could tell him that he wasn’t seriously injured. He wished it would work more like a homing signal or a communication device but it wouldn’t.

His rune was still faded but the sense of Will was there again. It had been missing for so long that Jem was surprised how strongly he felt like he’d recovered something immense and essential. The link had only existed for the blink of an eye in a very long life — just a handful of years out of 15. And yet, it had defined him and everything that came after.

Tessa’s hand was in his as they walked through Venice in the dark. Shuttered and silent, the city slept around them. He had said the past was strong here and it was even stronger in the dark. The modern pavements and concretes of New York and Los Angeles didn’t feel like flagstones beneath your feet. The sound of the water in the canals was almost like the sound of the Thames and if he closed his eyes he could call up exact memories of London as he’d seen it as a young man right down to the fogs.

She led the way to a large crumbling building and looked up at the faceless angels over the front doors with a frown line between her eyebrows. Jem scanned the building again, looking for the thing that he had missed. It looked quiet and empty. His patience waned faster than it usually did. He squeezed her hand and raised his eyebrows.

“The warding is different. It isn’t simple anymore,” she answered the silent question.

“You will not go in there alone,” Jem said before she could suggest it.

“If you go in there, it will not go well,” she said.

“They kicked you out,” he said, “They pushed you out a door and slammed it behind you. Magnus is on the Council and that you are his friend is not a secret. They aren’t going to welcome you with flowers and champagne.”

“I know that but they also won’t panic. You’re rather distinctly Nephilim. They’ll think I did bring the Council down on them,” she said running her fingers over the runes of his cheeks. In the dark her face was just shadows and impressions of features. There was no way she could see the marks below her fingers but she had the shape memorized.

“That isn’t far from the truth,” Jem said.

Tessa turned back to the church and didn’t answer him, “There is something wrong,” she said.

“Yes but please don’t put yourself in the middle of it,” he said. It was a losing argument but he made it. He did not want her in that building. Even without being able to feel the magic like she could, he knew that something was wrong. He reached out for the possible futures radiating out of this moment but the senses that allowed him to do that were long gone. The runes on his face were no longer active though they were still deep black against his skin.

“Go get the others. I’m already in the middle of it but I’m glad that I’m not in the middle of it by myself,” she said and then kissed him before he could say anything else. He leaned into the kiss harder than she was expecting and when they broke apart she looked just a little alarmed. He wanted to promise her that he was fine but wasn’t sure if it was true or not. He didn’t say anything. He did kiss her again.

Jem followed Tessa down the alley but she entered the building alone. He had his phone open and was dialing a number before the door had fully swung shut.

 

* * *

 

Will was leaning against the magical barrier that stood between the motley crew of seven time travelers and the even more motley crew of warlocks below them. Snippets of conversation could be heard from below but the little prison was set back from the edge of the choir loft and the barrier itself muffled sound.

What they could tell was that the warlocks were packing. It hardly seemed a good sign. Will had watched them box up materials he couldn’t identify as they spoke in low voices and looked around worriedly.

“Let me see your arm,” a voice interrupted his spinning thoughts and he turned to look at Edith Wilson. She was a woman who was ten years older than he was and thought the proper date was in August of 1922. She was a study in beiges from her sensible shoes to her demure little hat. Even her hair was a light brown that was nearly beige.

Dull and plain and yet she had an air authority about her that rivaled Charlotte’s. She had been an army nurse during the Great War. Will hadn’t asked what made it a war Great as he was too faint to do much more than pretend that he wasn’t faint. He held the arm out to her.

“Is the headache fading?” she asked as she prodded at the bandage she had wrapped around his arm.

“Yes,” he said. His stele was gone but even without iratzes his body was clearing the poisons from the bite quickly. The pain that had come with the bite had faded and now he was just suffering from the dizziness and lack of coordination that blood loss brought on and even that was less than it had been.

“Could you take one of them in a fight?” this question didn’t come from the practical Edith, it came from Alison. Alison Lynburn was exactly 100 years younger than Will - to the month - and somehow also two years older. It baffled him when he stopped to think about it so he avoided it.

She was the only other Shadowhunter to have come through. She had a Scottish accent, a lot of dark brown skin showing through an alarmingly orange shirt and a pair of tight trousers that might have come from a set of gear. Her black hair cut too short to even be considered boyish and she wore a ring in her nose.

“Yes,” Will said.

“It hardly matters as we are inside this thing,” this came from Edward, the werewolf from the 1840s as he thumped on the barrier.

Alison let out a torrent of swearing that was creative even by Will’s standards. She also had an attitude that made Will’s seem charming. In Alison’s own words, she was pissed right off. She had been there more than a week. It was grating on her. No one else stood too close to her. When she turned to hammer on the barrier herself, she went through.

“You were saying?” she said with something like glee in her expression.

The barrier was gone. Will gently disengaged from Edith’s still and shocked hands that had been prodding at the bandage on his arm and stepped toward the edge of the loft.

“Everyone stay up here,” Will said and was surprised that no one argued with him. They either had the upper hand because the spell had unexpectedly failed or they were being released for a reason. The reason was probably not something they wanted to discover too quickly.

Below them was a wide church floor cleared of pews. There was a pile of boxes and the remains of a pair of massive spell circles near the back door. A knot of warlocks stood near the sealed doors at the front of the church. They were gathered around a woman in dark pants and a blue sweater who pulled Will’s attention immediately.

“Another arrival,” Edith whispered looking out at the floor, “Another one of you.”

“How can you tell that from here?” Alison asked.

“I’ve met her,” Edith said. “Teresa something. Highsmith maybe or Highdale? She worked with the Shadowhunters in 1921. An entire camp of soldiers and a few of us nurses were bit by one crazy werewolf after the battle of the Somme. I can’t remember what her position was but Inquisitor Lightwood took her seriously whenever she gave advice. She gave me the number for the Praeter Lupus herself. How a Shadowhunter even knew it is beyond me but I’m still grateful for it.”

It was Tessa. His Tessa. No, even now, his mind whispered the correction: Jem’s Tessa. Tessa looked tall and severe in a way Will hadn’t ever thought she could be. Not a brave girl but a queen among commoners. When she turned to glare at the bat winged warlock who had originally met Will, the look was enough to make everyone shut up and listen to her.

“You’re all going to die here. This isn’t the first time this has happened. Seven warlocks died in Melbourne after Dmitri Zakarov showed up looking into time travel rumours. Melbourne doesn’t have seven warlocks of its own. They were an assembled team, like you,” she said in response to whatever had been said while Edith whispered her explanation.

Tessa stood among them and the division between two sides came visible as the little group shifted. She was among them as one of them, not a Shadowhunter but a warlock. He had never really thought of her as a warlock even as the evidence piled up that that was what she was. Will didn’t correct Edith because he couldn’t get the thoughts straight. He was busy wondering how old she was and whether or not she was happy and how she had found herself here and how she knew these people.

He found himself wondering if she remembered him at all.

That thought nearly crippled him.

If the others were right about the date they found themselves in, it was 136 years since he’d told her he loved her. 136 years of life between that moment and this one. Had they been friends? Had he ever succeeded in stopping himself from loving her? Had she still been kind to him after Jem -

He stopped himself from thinking it all the way through.

If the first thought nearly crippled him, that one finished the job.

His fingers were white against cracked paint of the rail and he had to be elbowed by Alison to be pulled back to the world as it was. 136 years from home. Everyone he knew must be a century gone.

Everyone but Tessa.

“We need to get out of here, are you coming?” Alison asked when he finally managed to look at her and actually see her face. Everyone he knew had already died before she’d been born. Will might have stayed frozen by thoughts like that if the werewolves hadn’t had better senses than he did.

“Something’s burning,” Edith said in the same calm voice she had used while bandaging up his bleeding arm. There was a wide gap of floor between where Will stood and where everyone else had gathered by the stairs. He hadn’t realized that everyone had moved. A feeling made up of longing and grief and confusion worried at his mind but if there was one thing William Herondale could do it was suppress his emotions.

“Try the window,” he said turning away from the stairs and the edge of the loft and Tessa. Letting her out of his sight made him nervous but they all needed an exit.

The large window at the back of the choir’s space had been boarded over from the outside and much of the glass had already been smashed out of the frames by weather or vandals or just time. They might have been able to pry loose the boards but the smoke that Edith had been able to smell thickened and the boards were heating up.

“I think the roof is on fire,” Alison said. In the last few hours she had filled every silence with talking even when nothing needed said.

They headed for the stairs. They made it down to the long hallway still smeared with Will’s dried blood and found that the back door was sealed too tightly to even shift when Alison threw her weight against it. Will turned first, needing to double check where Tessa was and they spilled out into the main room of the church in time to see the fight break out.

It wasn’t much of a fight really. Tessa had her back to the door and Will saw Trevor shove her. Moving shadowhunter fast, Tessa absorbed the impact and settled into a fighting stance for a brief moment before she lashed out. She hit him square in the chest and knocked him to the floor in an angry sputtering sprawl. She stood over him and looked down. Will couldn’t see her expression but he could see the warlock’s scowl.

Will and Jem had had a trainer as a boy who had done that back before Jessamine’s disinterest and Will’s attitude had chased him off like all the others. It was embarrassing to have someone just push you over because it meant you didn’t know how to fight at all. He had shoved Will over repeatedly until Will had taken to dragging Jem to the training room to drill footwork until he could dodge or block fast enough to stay up. It was rather more comedic when it was being done to someone else.

“The building is on fire and your back door doesn’t open,” Edith said when the warlocks all turned from the tussle to look at them.

Tessa looked over her shoulder and didn’t look away from him. He wasn’t sure she so much as scanned the other arrivals. One of them might have been a seven foot gorilla and she wouldn’t have seen it. Nothing in her expression was readable to him. It could have been horror or shock or relief or even mild annoyance. She looked ancient and childlike. She didn’t really look like Tessa at all.

“Get the front doors open,” she said and though she didn’t look away from him the order was issued to everyone else.

“If you’re right, we’ll step out there and he’ll kill us,” a warlock Will hadn’t met yet said.

“You’d rather take your chances with the fire?” she said finally looking away though only for a moment. Her accent was different, less American, with a different weight to the vowels. “There are people out there who can help. Follow the lights and get the hell away from the building. Dawn is coming and just about anything he might have called up won’t be able to follow you into sunlight.”

She wasn’t speaking to the warlocks now, she was speaking to the people around Will.

“You called the Council?”

“She would, she’s another one of Bane’s little sluts.”

“The hell is wrong with you?”

“When they kill us all, do you really think you’ll be safe?”

The voices overlapped but at least a few were moving to pull wood off the doors instead of yell things at Tessa. The wood was old and warped but they had magic on their side and a few of the arrivals went to help. Will was still watching Tessa and waiting for her to turn her attention back to him. He should have gone to help but he was caught by some spell in the way her expression shifted just slightly as the voices from the little crowd overlapped.

“Bane’s sluts?” of all the possible comments to answer, she chose that one and turned towards the person who had said it. “Are you serious? Is that really the insult you chose? He’s married now, did you know? Go get the doors down so we don’t burn to death you idiot.”

“You could have done better than idiot, you’re more creative than that,” Will said falling into step beside her, “Something like “foul diseased slug” perhaps.”

“He wouldn’t have got it if I’d tried,” she said with a brief but brilliant flash of smile.

“You’re here,” she said. She turned her back on everyone else, still yelling insults and her hand fluttered for a second but she didn’t touch him. The hesitation was so out of step with the orders and the aristocratic bearing that it shattered the illusion that she wasn’t the girl he had known. Older and stronger perhaps but still herself.

When she looked right at him the smile became that same look she’d given him before. There was so much force behind that look and he wasn’t any closer to understanding it. It wasn’t a happy look but it also wasn’t angry or even sad. It was strong enough that the gathering smoke up above and the sound of fire didn’t pull his attention like they should have. He should have worried when they heard the first crack of large pieces of the ceiling settling.

He should have felt that same trill of panic that everyone else did when they realized why the barrier spell on the circle upstairs had failed. There was a larger barrier between them and the outside world.

Instead his voice was calm and even when he spoke to Tessa.

“Can we get out?” he asked.

“Yes, you take them out the front and find the Shadowhunters, depending on when people came from they won’t trust them at all and none of the warlocks will but I trust those people, they’ll get everyone clear,” she said it just to Will in a low voice that sounded less like the angry warlock queen she had been and more like the girl he knew.

“I’ll go when you go, not sooner,” he said.

She might have argued but there wasn’t time for it. The crackling had become roaring and the air around them was hot and thick. The nave was stone but the fire was above them in the rafters and the supports for the dome. The lights failed and there were shrieks and pushing in the dark.

That there was still light to see by was terrifying in itself. The fire above them glowed bright though the rafters hadn’t started to collapse yet.

Tessa flattened her hands against the barrier and ignored everything else. Will stood near her but the warlocks who called commentary at her ignored him. The idea that Tessa might have contacted the Clave had set everyone on edge. He didn’t answer them either except for the one he hit. It hadn’t been planned but it was Trevor and he kept getting closer and closer as he tried to get Tessa’s attention. Will pulled the punch enough that the man staggered with a bloody lip instead of going down. He didn’t try to get close to her again.

Tessa didn’t appear to be doing anything but there was a tension to her and a little frown played across her face. The barrier split just enough to allow Will and the others near the front to catch a glimpse of the fire lit square and a breath of fresh air. She inhaled audibly and then pushed it wide enough that a person might pass through.

And they did.

Tessa held her ground to the side of the rift as people jostled by her. In the end there were only three of them left. It was Tessa’s friend with the orange hair and the curling horns who had stayed behind and Will perhaps should have waited to see what she had to say but he didn’t. He grabbed hold of her sleeve and pushed her out the gap with every intention of dragging Tessa along behind.

She had been fighting to hold the barrier in place the entire time. Her breathing had been uneven and sometimes even gasping. Whatever battle she was fighting she lost and fell forward as the rift she’d carved out fell shut again. Will had to catch her to keep her from collapsing to the floor.

“Tess?” he asked. He turned her so she leaned against the spot where the gap in the spell had been. She wasn’t unconscious but she leaned her head against his shoulder and let the barrier hold her weight.

“He’s fighting me. It’s not just the spell, someone’s trying to stop me,” she murmured.

“Can you do it a moment longer?” Will asked touching her face and tilting her chin up so she would look at him. She looked ragged and shaky.

“Not alone,” she said.

“It’s just us here, everyone else is gone,” he said.

“It’s you I need,” she said with a little smile that looked sad.

The same trainer who had been fond of pushing Will over whenever he missed his footwork had also had an irrational fear of warlocks. He had claimed you should never allow one to so much as shake your hand because they could drain all your power with a touch. Will had flagrantly ignored that advice a repeatedly just to see if it was true. So far he hadn’t been drained by any of the warlocks he had met.

“I’ve never done that,” he said.

“It’s ok,” she told him, “We’ve done it before. You and me,” she linked her fingers through his and even with the building burning down around them it made his heart stutter just a bit. She looked at him and the grey-blue of her eyes didn’t belong in this world painted in charcoal and black and orange. “You may have to drag me out of here.”

“Anything you need,” he said tightening his fingers around hers to let her know that she had his permission for whatever she was about to do.

She flattened her free hand against the barrier but didn’t turn back to look at it. She dropped her head to Will’s shoulder again and he felt the warmth of her magic spill up his arm and then draw something out of the center of him. He’d been expecting it to hurt but it felt peaceful if strange.

He pulled her in with his other arm so that he was actually holding her against his chest when she went rigid with the effort of forcing her way through the spell. He felt the yank in his chest somewhere when she pulled hard on the magic connection. She pressed herself a little closer to him and then screamed.

They tumbled out through the rift she opened and straight into a battle already raging. The little link and the feeling that he was full of water draining slowly vanished and Tessa collapsed against him with a soft noise that might have been his name. The heat of the fire made breathing difficult. Will gathered her into his arms and pulled her away from the roar of flames and the nearby screech of something that wasn’t human.

 

* * *

 

 

Jem did not see the fire start. He made it back to the square only moments after the first flames started licking up the rooftop. He wasn’t alone. He had a pair of rumpled Shadowhunters who had been dragged out of bed by a phone call that made only a little bit of sense. They had been prepared for most of what was going to happen but they had been intended to arrive in Italy later that day with a few more people. Instead of five or six, there were only two and Magnus who was still quite a bit farther behind them after opening and reseting the portal so that they could get out of the city quickly.

The fire wasn’t any of the things that Jem was prepared for. The shock of it wasn’t improved when they realized that the flash of flames wasn’t just fire. Pieces of it took flight and lifted up off the fledgling inferno on burning wings.

“Is anything about the two of you normal?” Jem looked over at Jace Herondale who, unlike him, was properly dressed and armed. He was all black and gold as he considered the church. He shrugged in an almost elegant way and continued, “Most people don’t find flying fire demons on their vacations.”

“Or get married on bridges,” Alec added.

“Or steal cats,” Jace said.

“He is my cat,” Jem said and he might have had a comeback for the other points but it was lost in a low swoop of the nearest of the flaming birds. It screeched as it came at them with claws outstretched. Any other details of its appearance were lost in a blur of fire as the three of them rolled away in different directions.

Jace’s blonde hair looked orange in the reflected fire light as he swung around with a runed blade that flashed before it bit into the thing. Jem couldn’t have moved that fast to get back and complete that swing before it took off again. He sometimes forgot just how much stronger and faster Jace was than even other Shadowhunters. The demon let out a second screech before it exploded into ichor and fizzling flame.

Alec had a bow and arrow and brought down two more. Even with training and experience on his side Jem’s throwing knives weren’t nearly as effective as the bow. The demons came thick and fast and the battle blocked out every other worry until Jem heard a human yell. Jace and Alec were to his right and this sound came from farther left and he swung around to look at the church and see the first people step out into the square and start to scatter.

He turned in that direction and dodged rather than attacked as he made his way forward. He met up with a Shadowhunter girl wearing neon and skinny jeans either forty years out of fashion or brand new off the shelves of a fashionable shop.

“How many people are still inside?” he asked. She gave the runes on his face a strange glance but that wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was that she didn’t immediately know who he was. He had gotten used to people knowing who he was. The Shadowhunter community was so small that being the only ex-Silent Brother in existence made him something of a household name. That he’d been one of only a handful of the few who survived the massacre added to the notoriety as did his role in the Battle of Alicante.

“Fucked if I know,” she said, “Not many. There were only 16 to begin with.”

Jem handed her a weapon. All of his weapons had been hastily borrowed from what Jace and Alec had brought with them. The sword he handed her was not really ideal for fighting flying creatures. He didn’t ask her about Will or Tessa.

“Are you the one the girl who is apparently not actually a Shadowhunter from 1920 claims is here to help?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. It was a pretty good description of Tessa and it eased something tight and anxious in him.

Jem sent the girl toward Jace and Alec and any one else he found he sent that way as well. He found a man curled against the stone fountain looking terrified and had to physically drag him to safety. He would find out later that Dennis the dentist was the only mundane to come through the portal and had been in a state of panic since he’d arrived. Fire and demons had sent him into a near catatonic state.

Nearer the church the attacks from the swooping demons thinned out and the only real danger was that the building was burning and starting to collapse. The fire was demonic and it was even eating through the stone now that it was picking up speed.

He hadn’t seen Tessa.

He scanned the building and then turned and looked out over the battlefield that had once been a square. There were still people scurrying about and he could pick out Alec rationing his last arrows. A warlock stood inside the fountain, it might have been Magnus but he was facing the wrong way for Jem to be sure. He raised water and flung it at the creatures making them hiss and shudder before they burst into unnatural flame again. It slowed them down but didn’t stop them.

Tessa wasn’t there. She wasn’t on the ground. She wasn’t on her feet. She simply wasn’t there. He turned back to the burning building and prepared to do something stupid. Something hit him hard between the shoulder blades and he hit the ground inelegantly with a sideways roll. He was flat on his back when the creature lunged at him with its claws and then went sideways. Jem pushed himself to his feet and caught it with the only sword he had left as it whirled again.

Ichor and flames blew past him as it disintegrated but didn’t actually stop. He wiped the mess away with his sleeve and turned to see that it had been a cafe chair that had hit the thing. The chair was made of ornate wrought iron and still had the little blue cushion tied to it. None of those details made Jem stop and blink.

“Are you thick?” Will asked and Jem blinked again. It might have proved the point but he didn’t have anything to say yet. Will was young. He wore shirt sleeves and had a bandage that stretched up his arm from wrist to elbow. Even disheveled he was as obnoxiously handsome as he had ever been. The familiarity of him surprised Jem. It had to be better than 130 years since he’d seen Will like this and yet he knew him immediately.

“Some days,” Jem told him. “Down.”

Will didn’t argue the point. He ducked and swung his chair up to catch the wings of the demon and yank it around. Someone’s hair burned before Jem managed to behead the thing. The smell of singed hair was strong even in the assault on the senses that was the demonic fire.

When they were both on their feet again, Will looked at Jem differently. The realization crossed his face slowly.

“You don’t recognize me. I hadn’t even considered that,” Jem said.

“You should be dead,” Will said.

“You actually are,” Jem said and even with him standing there the joke was painful.

“The Brothers,” Will touched Jem’s face and his expression was dark. Jem’s mind pulled up a long buried memory of how angry Will had been during their last meeting after Cadair Idris before he’d descended into the Silent City to start his training. Like the promise he had made Tessa, it was a memory both distinct and faded after being pulled out and thought over too many times.

“Zack!” Jace’s voice interrupted the train of everyone’s thoughts and Will followed Jem’s glance back towards where the people were massing. There were people on the ground but even at a distance, Jem knew that none of them were Tessa. The demons were gone, either dead or fleeing. Dawn was coming but the square was spattered with ichor where many of the things had died.

“Zack?” Will asked.

“I was Brother Zachariah when I met him,” Jem said absently as he turned to look back at the church. Whatever Jace needed could wait. Without intending to, he changed his footing so that his shoulder was against Will’s before he said “Tessa went in there.”

“I know,” Will said.

“Where is she?” he tried to be comforted by the tone in Will’s voice but Will was the type of person who could have buried any feeling. Jem had never pretended to understand what he was thinking.

“Over here,” Will said and Jem let the last of the fear go. His emotions weren’t always stable. Even five years after leaving the brothers and having them come back to him, he still swung wildly from one extreme to the other. His relief washed through him.

Tessa was tucked into the doorway of the cafe where the chair had come from. She was curled in the remains of Will’s jacket and her eye lashes fluttered when Jem touched her shoulder. He stumbled a little to settle down beside her. He kissed her forehead and she stirred a little closer to awake.

“Jem?” she said very softly.

“Hello,” he said.

“Jem, I had a dream,” she was muttering, half asleep. He had seen her like this only a handful of times when she had used too much magic and was left exhausted and drained. She had explained once that being half Shadowhunter allowed her to use types of magics that others couldn’t but she could never be as strong as someone like Magnus.

He pulled her forward and she curled into his arms so that he could pick her up. She was snuggly and needy when she was hurt. He held her close. Will was quiet and distant and Jem kicked him in the ankle. It was something they’d done as children when they’d wanted one another’s attention. Will looked at him and there was something incredulous in his expression.

“I am so glad to see you,” Jem said.

“And I you,” Will said.

They turned back towards the little group across the square. It wasn’t safe to stay here. It wasn’t safe to be in the country but that relief that had washed through Jem hadn’t faded.

“I had a dream that Will was here,” she whispered into his chest.

“I know,” Jem said to her looking over at Will who gave him a smile that he had seen before but hadn’t been able to read back then. He had thought it indulgent annoyance at all the romantic sappiness. It wasn’t. It was a smile that said, I’m trying to be happy for you but it hurts.

“I know,” Jem repeated in answer to that smile though Will would assume it was directed at Tessa. He did know. He had lost her too. He held her close as he bumped his shoulder against Will again and then led the way across the square. 


	8. Portals

In a plain looking apartment not too far from where the church smouldered in early morning sunlight, Magnus Bane had made a portal. Will hadn’t seen him at the battle until the very end when he had appeared near the pair of Shadowhunters who kept calling Jem “Zack” and flung magic up at some of the last circling demons.

He’d been snapping orders to get everyone, including the injured and the two dead, from the square to the portal when he’d caught sight of Will and given him a very strange look. Everyone else was already moving and Magnus made his way through the stream of people moving the opposite direction to come stand in front of them.

Jem still held Tessa and stood beside him. Will had been casting little glances at her when no one else was watching just to make sure that she wasn’t any worse. She was pale but peaceful with her cheek pressed against Jem’s shirt. He wanted to ask if she was still cold because she had been so cold when he’d pulled her out of the building. He didn’t.

“Nobody mentioned this,” Magnus said looking at Will with his head tilted a little and his cat eyes glinting strangely in the half light of dawn. He wore black but his shirt had a design picked out on it in some sort of glittering black beading. His hair had been hit by some errant water spell another warlock had thrown during the battle but even wet and disheveled it had a bit of a sparkle to it. Anyone else would have looked comical.

“We didn’t know,” Jem said.

“Really? Magnus asked.

“We weren’t sure,” Jem said.

“How could you tell?” Will asked looking at Jem. Inside, Tessa had been shocked but maybe she had not really been surprised by his arrival.

“We’re parabatai,” Jem said as though it explained everything. Will wasn’t sure if it was Magnus’s expression or his that made Jem explain it, “Yesterday afternoon it was back. The parabatai link is a thing you can feel. I hadn’t felt it in more than a century. I’d almost forgotten what it was like.”

“Hmm,” Magnus turned to Will, “Are you still cursed? I hope not because holy hell was that an annoying phase,” Magnus asked before Will could ask Jem all the questions he wanted to about losing the link in the first place, about the brothers, about getting it back. It was such a part of him that he couldn’t imagine living without it.

“No,” Will said. “I have you to thank for that.”

“True you do. You should consider thanking me with food and good wine,” Magnus said.

They were moving now. Jem had his hands full with Tessa and Magnus and Will had found themselves in charge of carrying a warlock with a head wound. Without glamours the little train of people would have caused quite a stir but magic made sure that those out for early morning strolls or on their way to their places of employment found anything else to look at.

“The man with the metal robot things, is he still a problem?” Magnus continued the questions. “I can’t remember his name, Mudvayne? No, I think that’s a band.”

“Yes, Mortmain’s still a problem,” Will said.

“So no caves then,” Magnus said and Will saw Jem shoot him a look but it didn’t mean anything to Will so he ignored it.

He was saved having to answer any more questions by their arrival at a building that looked like all the other buildings on the street. Magnus left Will to shoulder the weight of the warlock who groaned periodically and muttered complaints while he opened the doors and led the way inside.

The group hadn’t been quiet but they’d been easier for Will to block out in the street. Inside the little room all the worried flutters of conversation were pressing in and Will wanted to turn around and leave. He might have if Jem and Tessa weren’t there.

Across one wall an arch of runes had been drawn in a hasty hand. Will picked out a few from the Gray Book but most were warlock runes he couldn’t identify. It all glowed green. Magnus had made his way to stand beside it and was shooing people away from it as he fussed with the final preparations for the spell.

Near the back of the group Jem and Tessa stood. Tessa was awake enough that Jem had set her down. She leaned into him but stood on her own two feet. The two Shadowhunters from the battle were talking to them. After lying the man he was carrying down with the other injured, Will made his way back to the little knot of them. He stood at Jem’s side where he would have back home and they both looked at him. He didn’t quite put himself between them and Tessa but he put himself close enough that he could have if they proved a threat.

The blonde one had strange eyes, almost gold. The other had black hair and blue eyes though a much lighter colour than Will’s. They both wore gear and carried seraph blades though from the conversation they were having with Jem they were not there with official Clave approval.

“And if we show up in New York, my mother will kill us all,” the dark haired man said.

“You’re 25 and you’re still scared of our mother?” the blonde asked. They didn’t look anything like siblings but there was a sense of unity about them that being brothers might explain. They had the air of being unshakably on the same side of any fight.

“Don’t lie, you’re afraid of her too,” he said.

“I’m 152 and I’m a little afraid of your mother,” Jem said. “But that is not the point. We need to get those three in to see Catarina, that means New York.” There were three seriously injured, including the man Will had been carrying and Edith who was capable of walking but had been bitten on the shoulder deep enough that without a capable doctor she would lose her arm.

Jem pushed on in a quiet authoritative voice, “Keeping it a secret will just make it worse. This is not a secret. It was an emergency requiring expediency. Besides, she is the head of the Institute and will hardly be surprised that any of us are operating off script.”

“Aren’t you supposed to know better?” the blonde asked.

“Oh no, he’s almost as bad as you are, Jace, trust me on that,” Tessa said with a half closed eyes and a twitch of a smile. All her sharp edges had been smoothed off by exhaustion. Will often had the urge to protect her from everything but seeing her like this made that need so much stronger. When it snuck up on him like this it was almost like forgetting how much he loved her and discovering it anew.

“He hides it better than most people,” Will said. “People always assume that James is the good one.”

“Yes, well, compared to you, I am,” Jem said then turned back to the others without introductions which was a very un-Jem-like lapse in good graces, “Go get us clearance to bring everyone through. Tell Maryse she can blame us if she needs someone to tell off. It was our idea.”

Once he’d chased the others off and they’d started cajoling people up to the runes that had been drawn onto the wall, Jem turned to Will. He was both Jem and a stranger and it made Will uneasy. Jem was a constant, a foundation but now he’d gone off and lived a long life and become someone else. Someone with deep brown eyes that were almost black and carried years in them in a way that had nothing to do with the age of his face.

“One of us has to go talk to Maryse and probably Robert and Ethan or one of the other cronies from the Inquistor’s office,” Jem said and Will didn’t miss the easy way in which he and Tessa were simply “us” though Jem didn’t seem to notice it.

Tessa’s gray eyes found Will’s face for a moment before fluttering shut again. She wasn’t injured but she how ill she was still terrified him. Will curled his fingers into his pockets as Jem spoke because reaching for her in that moment would have been ridiculous and inappropriate. His fingers itched to touch her cheek or her hair. He wanted to be able to tilt her chin up so she looked him in the eye the way that Jem did.

“I’m going to go and talk to them,” Jem said when she was looking at him. “You’re going home.”

Tessa closed her eyes and frowned, “I’d rather stay.”

“Liar, you think you need to stay because you think everything that went wrong is somehow your fault,” Jem said, “You don’t and it isn’t. Once everyone else is gone, take Will and go home.”

“Will?” she said and her voice was weaker than it had been. She braced her hands on Jem’s chest but she was wavering. Jem gave him another look over the top of her head and this time it was a clear message. He was being asked to take care of her.

“Take him home, I’ll find you there when the Clave has finished asking questions,” Jem said. Tessa nodded and though she hadn’t actually crumpled, she leaned heavily into him again.

Jem held her tight for a moment. Everyone else had filtered through the portal and Will still had no idea how it worked. Magnus stomped over before he left too just to say, “I saw nothing.” It was as close to permission to use the portal as they were going to get. When Magnus was gone it was just the three of them.

The first time he said it, Will assumed he was talking about Tessa and said, “Are you sure you shouldn’t stay with her? She should be with someone she trusts if she’s hurt.”

“Are you hurt?” Jem repeated, touching his shoulder and frowning just a little. His voice was as even as it had been when he’d been talking to Jace and Magnus but there was a force behind the words that hadn’t been there before.

“Nothing the iratze won’t fix,” Will said. He held up the arm that Edith had bandaged, it was still wrapped but there was an iratze drawn above the bandage near his elbow that was already starting to fade as it worked.

Tessa had faded as well and while Jem did whatever it was that made the portal activate, Will took his place beside Tessa. He wasn’t paying any attention to how the magic worked. She was still cold. He’d expected to just need to provide an arm for her to lean on but once the audience of strangers was gone Tessa had stopped putting so much effort into acting normal. She was far worse than he thought she was and it terrified him that he might to fail her in some way while she was so vulnerable.

“Promise me that you’ll both be fine,” Jem said.

“We’ll both be fine,” Tessa said immediately.

“I love you, go to sleep, I’ll see you soon,” Jem said to her. Before he pushed them towards the portal and through it, Jem stopped and leaned his shoulder against Will’s. They were a little knot of three people for a moment before Jem flashed a grin and said, “Be safe, please.” The smile erased Will’s lingering sense that this person was a stranger as well as his friend. He was only Jem when he smiled and Will smiled back more out of relief than anything else.

Will had to almost carry Tessa through the portal. He looked back, expecting to see Jem on the other side of some window but he was gone. They had stepped through into a little sitting room with huge bookshelves and curtains that let in only slivers of light from what Will assumed were the street lamps of the city.

Tessa stepped away from him and collapsed onto the vague outline of a piece of furniture. He knelt down with her intending to ask her what she needed but her expression was all unreadable intensity again and it froze him in place. Her hand fluttered toward him again but at the last moment she leaned over and lit a lamp on the table.

She hadn’t touched him. He had touched her, had picked her up and carried her around. She hadn’t touched him. He pulled back and sat on the edge of a low table nearby so he wouldn’t be nearly so intrusive.

The sofa she sat on was dark green and she looked pale against the rich colour. Her hair was a mess and there was something smeared across her cheek that could have been ash or even dried blood or just dirt. He didn’t reach to wipe it away. He was beyond improper already and did not want to make it worse.

“Will,” she said.

“Tess,” he said with a little smile.

“You’re hurt,” she said and her hand moved toward his bandaged arm. It fell away again before she touched him. “I’m sorry. I should have turned them in the moment Nat told me what was happening. I’m so sorry you got caught in it. You should be home.”

“Don’t be sorry. You did nothing wrong,” Will said. “I’m not sorry to be here. How many people can say that they’ve seen what the future will be?” He wasn’t sure he felt quite that cavalier about the entire thing but he couldn’t talk about his worries with her as she looked ready to collapse.

She frowned like she was about to begin an argument and shivered. Will reached out to touch her hand to see if it was any warmer but stopped short of it. He got up instead and looked around the space. The lamp lit enough of a circle of light that he could find a blanket that had been tossed over a nearby chair. When he picked it up a piece of sheet music fell off the chair and drifted to the ground. He put it back on the chair and returned to drop the blanket over Tessa’s shoulders. She looked up at him and her gaze followed him as he sat back down in front of her.

“You’re here,” she said. Incredulous and still far too intense.

“I’ve never been to New York,” he said though he knew it wasn’t what she meant. He tried to keep the conversation light and easy because that was what you did while visiting people who were ill. His mind wouldn’t settle on how he felt about being there and he didn’t want her to ask about time travel or impossibilities. He pushed on, knowing that he was nattering, “I always imagined that if I came to America, I’d come by ship. Where should I visit?”

There was another moment of hesitation but this time she reached out and put her hand on his. He had leaned forward so his elbows were braced on his knees and his hands hung between them. Her fingers were cold and he didn’t move. She traced just her finger tips down the back of his hand then she curled her fingers around his.

He forgot how to breathe.

It wasn’t the fingertips though they didn’t help. It was the look on her face. It was that unreadable one that his imagination kept trying to fill in with wishful thinking. Once she held one of his hands in both of hers the hesitation came back. It was like balancing on an edge and she was going to push him over. Either direction was going to hurt.

“Come here?” she made it a question as she tugged on his hand just a little. This was going to hurt because she wasn’t his to hold. He wasn’t a good enough person to deny her anything even if it was wrong. He sat down beside her and she rested her head on his shoulder. She still wore his jacket, too big and tattered.

“I miss you,” she whispered and he gave up on his attempts at propriety and wrapped his arms around her. He was going to say something stupid, something she didn’t want to hear if he opened his mouth at all so he pressed his lips to her hair instead. The tension left her as she gave up her attempts to stay awake.

He hadn’t noticed how tired he was until he was settled back against the corner of the sofa with her close enough that he was aware of her heartbeat. He closed his eyes and pulled her in so that she rested close to him. He could forget that this was wrong when she shifted and brought herself just a little closer. He gathered her cold hands in one of his and held them near his heart.

She whispered something that must have been, “I miss you” again but his infinite capacity for wishful thinking filled in a different word. He could feel her fall asleep, her breathing changed, her body relaxed, her hand no longer held his but just lay in his palm.

He fell asleep moments after she did with the words she mustn’t have said still ringing in his head.


	9. Mad House

The questions were endless. Jem sat at one of the long tables in the Institute’s library where a particular bored school boy had carved JW into the wood at some point in his childhood. He considered doing the same. Adding a JC just to see how Ethan Lancaster would react was a childish response. Then again, it was close to noon and thanks to the time change, Jem hadn’t slept in nearly 36 hours. He felt childish. He just wanted to go home. No one he wanted to talk to was in the room.

Most of the questions had been about verifying that the portal did what they said it did. Most of the warlocks had run for it during the battle but a few had stuck close in the hopes that it would keep them safe. They explained what they knew and Jem had a new appreciation for Tessa’s assertion that they were idiots.

It was like listening to children tell you about how to play with fire because it wasn’t really that hot.

The most frustrating part of the hours of questions hadn’t been the warlocks but the way little band of time travelers was treated. All the doubt fell on them and the questions kept circling around whether or not they were lying. Alison in particular had gotten more and more snappish as the process had dragged on.

Will had erased all doubts he might have had. Jem believed them and had started out gently defensive when the questions started getting invasive or pushy but had become less gentle about it with each repetition. They were tired and hurt and deserved better. They’d been treated as prisoners and Jem had sincerely hoped that the Clave would treat them better than that. This was not better. 

Finally it was simply enough.

“It’s time to go to sleep,” Jem said interrupting someone in mid-sentence. He didn’t even know who it was anymore. “If there aren’t enough rooms here, I will pay for hotel rooms myself but it is time to sleep.”

“There are rooms here, it is best if everyone stays here,” Maryse said giving Jem a look that had everything to do with the fact that Will wasn’t there. He didn’t flinch. He smiled, small but pleasant, and didn’t say anything.

He understood why she considered taking Will out of the group to be a reckless move but he did not agree, nor did he really care what opinions she might hold on the matter.

“Because you won’t let us leave?” Trevor asked. The batwinged warlock who had raised the hellhounds was one of Jem’s least favourite people at that moment. That he’d stayed during the fight seemed less an act of honesty or trying to do the right thing and more like cowardice. He was more afraid of the shadowy Dmitri than he was of the Clave. That was unsettling given how most warlocks who had lived through the days of Circle considered the Clave but it wasn’t why he bothered Jem so much. He’d threatened Tessa and nearly gotten Will killed. That he’d done it out of ignorance and cowardice made it worse than an act of evil.

“Yes,” Maryse said. “You will be staying here until other arrangements can be made.”

It took more time after that to get everyone organized and settled. Jem found a spot near the library door and waited. He let his body fall back into old patterns. Still and expressionless not out of necessity but habit.

“He’s your parabatai? The guy at the fight with the dark hair?” Jace had appeared at his shoulder and Jem turned and looked at him without changing his expression. He was too tired for expressions. It had come up during the rounds of interrogation. Jem had simply told the truth. The others hadn't given Will's existence any more weight than anyone else's and Jem was a little relieved that Jace at least seemed to understand that this was important. 

“Yes,” Jem said. 

“You’re sure though, that it’s him. That’s why you keep siding with the arrivals,” Jace said, the little name had stuck thus far. “Could you feel it?”

“Yes, it came back,” Jem said putting his hand to the rune without meaning too. Neither of them needed it explained.

“That’d be strange,” Jace said.

Jem gave a little shrug. It was strange but it was also an impossible gift. It was a thing he’d wanted too much to even ask for in his darkest thoughts.

If he’d had been given a wish it would be to ask for one more conversation when they were both human. He wanted to sit with Will and be entirely himself. They had had only five years before he'd joined the Brothers. Jem had never truly gotten to know Will as he was once the curse was gone. He'd been Zachariah and as much as Will and Tessa had insisted upon calling him Jem he hadn't been himself. They’d been friends as best they could be but the Brotherhood had been a wall.

In a silent voice that whispered only through Will's mind, Jem had been able to tell him jokes and stories but it wasn't the same. He hadn't been able to take the same joy in telling the jokes, in seeing Will's reactions, in bouncing ideas back and forth until they became brilliant or ridiculous. He had forgotten how much he'd lost until he'd found echoes of it in talking to Tessa. It wasn't the same and sometimes it made Jem miss him more.

If it had been possible, if wishes could be granted, he would have asked for one more conversation about ferrets and demon pox and the potential for ducks to become blood thirsty.

“He’s a Herondale, you said that right? He's related to me?” Jace made it a question.

“Distantly,” Jem said and he knew it was a cagey response but Tessa had always been uncomfortable with starting that conversation with Jace and he didn’t want to say the wrong thing. It wasn’t untrue but it didn’t feel like the right answer either.

Jem looked at Jace then. He didn’t look like Will unless you were looking at the details. Jem had picked them out, the little bits of genetic flotsam that had made it down through the generations. Tessa told him he was a little odd for noticing that they had the same hands or that Jace rolled his eyes the same way that she did when he was annoyed. There was some resemblance to Will in his in the smile too.

“I’ve never met another Herondale. Well, except for Imogen and she was… well, Imogen,” Jace trailed off. Jem didn’t suppress the smirk because she had certainly been a very particular sort of person. "You said once that you owed more to the Herondales than to the Clave. That's because of him." This time it wasn't a question. 

“Will’s one of the best,” Jem said. “There are many reasons to be proud of that name up and down your family tree and Will is one of them. So was Imogen in a lot of ways. But Will was, is, always will be, my best friend. He’s one of the best people you will every meet. He is also an atrocious poet and has a bit of a temper but still, one of the best.”

“Maryse wants you to bring him in,” Jace said.

“I know,” Jem said. “We will but I’m going to go sleep for a week before I do anything else. Maryse said she wanted to talk to me before I left.”

“Just leave,” Jace said. “They’re talking about portals again in there. Just leave. If it had been a century since I’d seen Alec,” he shrugged, “I’d just leave.”

Jem smiled at him and then he turned and just left.

 

* * *

 

Bright afternoon sunlight slanted through a gap in the curtains by the time Jem made it home. The apartment was warm because sunlight always heated it up and the scent of smoke was in the air. It clung to his clothes and it must be clinging to everyone who had been there. The apartment was quiet. The sounds of the street below and even of the neighbours were muffled not just by thick glass and brick walls but also by magic.

They’d had an apartment in Macau for a little while with thin walls that had let the sound of their fighting neighbours in. Tessa had perfected sound wardings while they were living there. They had no idea if the neighbours here had happy marriages and they were perfectly happy without that knowledge.

Jem found Will and Tessa leaned together on the sofa in the living room. She had twisted towards him so she could tuck her head in against his chest. His fingers were still tangled in her hair. Jem paused on the stairs and looked at them.

They had been his touchstone for sixty years. Not only each of them but both of them. The yearly meetings with Tessa and the silent, stolen conversations with Will had been important, essential to hold onto his humanity. The two of them together though had meant something different. How much they had loved each other had been its own foundation for him. A way of proving that there was good in the world.

He had seen them together but he’d never gotten to see the moments like this. A part of him whispered that he should turn and leave them alone but a louder part needed to be sure that Will was truly there. Jem crossed the room quietly and touched his shoulder. Will scrunched up his face and grimaced.

“M’sleeping, go away, Carstairs,” he said his voice was indistinct. Jem had forgotten these conversations. They’d been a regular occurance once. Will would simply neglect to sleep and Jem would be left with the task of attempting to wake him the next day. Anyone else would suffer verbal abuse if they tried.

This time, Will didn’t wake enough to realize he had someone sleeping on his chest but he still knew that it was Jem talking to him.

“We do have beds in this century,” Jem said sitting down beside him.

“Don’t care,” Will said and when he shifted, probably intending to shove Jem away, he became aware of Tessa and his eyes flew open and he was suddenly completely awake. He looked down at the top of her head for a very long time before turning his attention and his dawning realization to Jem. It took him a long moment to remember where he was.

“You’re fine, stay there,” Jem said. Will had gone from relaxed to tense in an instant and he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. Jem was too tired to know what needed saying to ease Will’s anxiety that he’d done something wrong. He didn’t know how to explain it without explaining entire lifetimes and he was too tired for that too.

He settled back on the sofa in so his shoulder was against Will’s and reached across to where Tessa’s head lay against the other one. He pushed her hair back from her face. She didn’t stir but he hadn’t expected her too. She would likely be asleep for another twelve hours yet.

Will schooled his expression and stayed in place. It was feigned relaxation but it was done quite well. His hair was a tangled mess of black curls, longer and wilder than it would be at any other point in his life. Jem touched a piece that stuck out at a funny angle from his forehead.

“You look ridiculous,” Jem said dropping his hand back to his lap. He was being weird. He was often weird but he usually had social rules to fall back on when he forgot how people behaved normally. Mostly people didn’t have to think about whether it was appropriate to shake hands or hug or tell funny stories. Jem had worked out through observation and faux pas when and with who it was ok to do most things.

Will didn’t fit into any of the categories that Jem had taught himself to react to. Touching his hair didn’t seem weird until after he’d done it.

“I style my hair with live ferrets. You encase your head in a glass bauble and then release the ferrets inside. It’s the only way to get it to stand up like this,” Will said with a perfectly straight face.

Jem looked at him, thinking hard because he was still trying to decide if he had crossed some social line. What Will had said hadn’t made sense. The moment stretched before Jem started to laugh. He was tired and stressed and once he started laughing it was almost impossible to stop.

“Yours is the right colour now, if we got you some ferrets we could make you look almost as stylish as I do,” Will said reaching over to ruffle Jem’s hair into a mess. It made him laugh harder as he tried to pull away. Will got a fistful of shirt and dragged him back. Neither of them were fighting hard because they were trying not to wake Tessa. Jem stopped struggling and let Will push his hair up so it stuck up as well. That it stayed made him aware of how much he needed to wash the remains of the battle out of it.

He was still laughing when he sat back against the sofa. Will was smirking at him now and looked just like he did when Jem called up memories of him. His memories from before the Brotherhood were stretched thin but still more vibrant than the ones he had made during that time. Impressions, images, sounds, even smell didn’t hold the way it did in his human memories. He could remember the facts but nothing that felt real the way his memories from before and after felt real. It was like 130 years of dreaming between the beginning of his life and the resumption of it. Will was real and Jem laughed again. 

“Is this a mad house?” Tessa asked blinking awake and pushing herself up enough to see him. Jem almost started laughing again just because he was relieved that she was well enough to talk or maybe just because he had both of them in the same place.

“This has always been a madhouse,” Jem told her and then he kissed her. She was only half awake and she tasted of smoke but she was well and she was there. He pulled back sooner than he wanted to and far later than he should have when he remembered that he’d had to pull her across Will in order to do it. He dropped his hands where they had cupped her face but she stayed there with her hand braced on Will’s leg and her face sleepy and confused.

“Are you hungry?” Jem asked her and the abrupt topic change made her frown.

“I’m hungry,” Will said and everyone pulled back. Not far, just far enough that they weren’t touching. He was rapidly covering an expression that might have been alarm or even horror. It was gone by the time Tessa turned the confused look at him. He gave her a pleasant smile that approximated normal far better than anyone else’s expression did.

The food was microwavable dinners that Tessa picked at and Will declared disgusting though he ate three. Jem told them what had come out during the meeting though it wasn’t much that they didn’t already know. It comprised how the warlocks had been contacted anonymously and the Clave records of what had happened in Melbourne. The Melbourne records were spotty as after the uprising the city had closed its Institute and operated as a satellite of the not terribly large Sydney Institute until 2013.

Tessa collapsed into bed again and Jem left Will in the spare room after a brief lesson on how to use the shower and the rest of the bathroom before he went to join her. He wasn’t sure if he would be able to sleep but he dropped off before he’d laid all the way down. 

 

 

* * *

 

Tessa had washed her hair three times to get the scent of fire out of it before she’d braided it back and let it drip onto her shirt. If she had stopped to think she might have chosen a different outfit than the shorts and the tank top but she was still thinking through a fog of exhaustion. She could move without her muscles screaming but she was a long way from feeling like herself.

When the kitchen door opened, she thought it was Jem back from the emergency shopping trip he’d taken. Her smile broke before she’d even looked up from the book she’d spread on the table though she wasn’t alert enough to truly read. It wasn’t Jem. 

It was Will. 

He looked far too normal to be a time traveler or a survivor of multiple demon attacks only the day before. He wore a gray t-shirt that stretched just a little too tight across his chest and a pair of plaid pajama pants that Tessa remembered buying for Jem. He wore green socks. He must have washed his hair because it tumbled over his forehead in waves instead of snarls. It had been too dark and she’d been too distracted to really see the colour of his eyes the night before. 

They widened just a fraction when she stood up. It reminded her too late that she wasn’t wearing something that one should entertain in. She’d already made it halfway across the room by that point. By the time she’d considered going to get a robe she had thrown her arms around him and he staggered just a little under the force of it. 

“I thought I had dreamed you,” she said in a soft voice. 

“While I recommend dreaming of me as I am rather wonderful, I do seem to truly be here,” he said with a little laugh that wasn’t quite happy. She pulled him in a little closer and he finally squeezed her back. He smelled like Jem. He’d borrowed the clothes and the soap she realized but that scent was enough to surprise her. He didn’t smell like Will who had used soaps that had long ago become unavailable and had worn clothing that had been washed by hand in lye soaps. 

She let him go but didn’t step back. He held her gaze. She couldn’t have said who was that held the other in place but neither moved back. Her fingers found their way to his hair and then down is temples to his eyes where he held perfectly still as she traced the shape of them very lightly. His lashes against her finger tips were butterfly light. 

“I don’t remember you like this,” she said. 

“You don’t remember me?” he asked. 

“I remember you. Of course I remember you but the you I remember is older. When I remember you, I remember you with gray here and laugh lines around your eyes. I would have said they’d been there since I met you but I guess not,” she said rubbing her thumb along the skin near his eyes. “You look more like,” she started but then shook that thought out of her head because it didn’t bear saying. ‘You look more like Jamie than I thought you did,’ was not something she could say to him. 

“You’re managing the differences well,” she said because she couldn’t fall silent. 

“I considered running off and hiding behind drapery. Perhaps I could spend some time cowering until a servant found me but as you don’t appear to have any servants I was left with having to manage,” Will said. The comment was absurdly specific and it took Tessa a long time to place it.

That was what Nate had done. 

When he’d found himself among the Shadowhunters, he had run off and been found by Cyril - no, not Cyril, Thomas, Thomas had told her where he was and it had been the last time she’d spoken to him before he’d died - Nate had been found by Thomas hiding behind a drapery. 

And suddenly it crashed into her. The fog cleared and she was left with the stark truth. It wasn’t an idea or a possibility. It wasn’t a fever dream or a case of mistaken identity. This wasn’t a boy who looked like Will. This wasn’t a whispered conversation that maybe he was here. No, this was Will. Will at the very beginning of his life. Will who didn’t know that they’d been married. Will who had only just escaped his curse. Will who was solid under her hands. 

She ran her hands down his arm and found the place where the spiraling scar should have started but didn’t because it wouldn’t happen until he was in his thirties. She found the training scar on the back of his hand where he had dropped a throwing knife while trying to show off. He had told her that story while laughing. They hadn’t been dressed at the time. She found the space on his arm where the rune for marriage was not and resisted tracing the shape of it with her fingers. 

“Tessa?” he asked and when she looked up at him, his expression was all concern. He’d looked at her like that when she’d been talked into going to Idris to help one of the Lightwoods manage Downworld affairs in war torn areas of Europe where the Clave was trying to regain control of the wannabe warlords and that one errant pack werewolves running amok. He’d looked at her like that when she’d gone into labour early with their second child. 

Her vision blurred. 

“Tess,” his voice was different and she realized she was crying as he pulled her in so that her head was against his shoulder. He’d been home for so long and it had taken so long to rebuild her life without having him there. She pulled back from him and he let her go reluctantly. His hands still held hers and she was loath to break that last bit of contact. 

“I’m sorry,” she said in a voice that didn’t quite sound like it belonged to her. She turned and left the room. His touch stayed with her as she fled like his skin left residue. 

In the bathroom she tried to wash her face but crumpled down to sit on the edge of the bathtub and attempt to smother the worst of the tears with a towel. She reached down for all the ways she had found to keep her emotions in check but all those methods had been learned in the years after she’d lost him. They shattered around her because he was here. He was here and he didn’t know who he was yet. He was here and he was real but he wasn’t really her Will yet.

 

* * *

Will stood in the kitchen pushing buttons on things and listening for Tessa. She wasn’t crying any longer but he didn’t know where she was or what she was doing. 

He discovered that the dials on the stove allowed you to light it. He’d almost set his arm on fire with that discovery. The little box with the glass door lit up and the tray turned but he had no idea how it cooked anything. The radio was his most recent discovery when Jem made it home. He didn’t know that the radio itself was nearly 40 years old and had been built behind the iron curtain. It had moved with Tessa through multiple apartments. Jem found him playing with the dials to find different stations and making faces in reaction to the music and the news. When he came in the room, Will turned the machine over in his hand twice before he turned the volume knob down to zero. It wasn’t quite off but it did the same thing. 

“Something’s wrong,” Jem said. 

“Am I that easy to read?” Will asked. 

“Not to most people, just to me,” Jem said. 

“Even if I lived to be atrociously old, I’ve been dead for 50 years. More likely, I died in a ditch before I was 25. You haven’t seen me in a long time,” Will said. 

“You did not die in a ditch, you asshole,” Jem said in that placid voice he used whenever he thought Will was being unreasonable. “Still, something’s upset you,” he spoke as he pulled food and boxes out of a bag and dumped them over the counter. It was a clear sign the conversation about Will’s death was not to be opened. Jem was probably right, he probably didn’t want to know but the morbid little bit of curiosity crawled up his spine. 

“It’s nothing,” Will lied effectively to everyone else but Jem had always accepted his lies rather than believed them. Now he didn’t accept the lie. He looked at Will and pulled himself up to sit on the counter top and look at him. 

Will couldn’t explain what it was that was bothering him. Tessa’s skin had still been warm and just a little damp from her bath when she’d thrown herself into his arms and his stupid mind wouldn’t stop playing that moment for him over and over again. That moment where she’d caught herself against him the night before received almost as many showings. She’d been close enough that he had felt the way her stomach muscles tightened and he had been able to watch exactly how her jaw had moved to answer Jem’s kiss. 

Jem had been so careful and polite after that moment. It had been a brief glimpse into the little world they’d only started building when he’d seen them last. Tessa had looked so surprised when he’d pulled away from her, like she’d forgotten that there was anyone else in the room. Jem had held her attention utterly. Will’s heart broke all over again. 

“I made her cry,” Will said which wasn’t the whole explanation but it was the thing that had been needling his conscience since she’d left the room in a flurry of tears and apologies. 

“Does that surprise you?” Jem asked. 

“I was hardly expecting it,” Will said.

“You died, not in a ditch and not drunk or any other ridiculous story you want to tell yourself but you did die, William,” Jem said it very directly but there was weight in the words. 

Will’s instinct to turn it into a joke faded. He had been expecting Jem’s death since they’d been introduced and even so the idea of it had never been tolerable. He’d feared losing him, he’d had nightmares about being left alone in empty rooms, he’d imagined the day but he’d never accepted it. 

And for all that preparation, Jem had been the one to live it. He’d been the one who had to live on alone. Will swallowed down every smart ass comment that his mind threw out. He would not want to hear sarcasm from Jem if it were Jem standing in his kitchen decades are his death. 

“It’s not an old wound,” Will said trying to imagine that loss if it had been his. If he had lost Jem and not the other way around. 

“It is,” Jem said with a sad smile, “But old wounds can still cause pain. You were important to her. You still are. Even if you weren’t standing here, you would still be important to her. We lost you, we continue to mourn you and now you are here. I am so glad to see you again that I haven’t started crying yet.” 

“Were you planning on it?” Will asked noting but choosing to ignore that easy use of ‘we’ again. 

“No, but I’m expecting those emotions to hit me soon,” Jem said with an elegant shrug. He waved Will over and when they stood face to face Jem took his shoulders and smiled. Each time he did that he forced Will to accept that those dark eyes were Jem’s and the colour didn’t matter. Jem started to speak and stopped twice. Sitting on the counter made Jem just a little taller than he was. 

“What?” Will asked. 

“Do you want me to ask her to stop touching you?” Jem asked and Will’s stomach lurched sideways. 

“Don’t look at me like that, you’ve done nothing wrong. I just,” Jem stopped and closed his eyes for a moment. Will found himself doing the thing he always did when Jem wasn’t looking. He checked to see how dark the shadows under his eyes were, how pale his skin was, if he was breathing evenly, if there were tremors in his wrists. Nothing. Not an inch of evidence that he had ever been ill a day in his life. 

“If you ask her to stop it would sound like a rebuke. If I ask it will sound like jealousy,” Jem said. “I’d rather she think I was jealous than think that you were upset with her.”

“Are you?” Will asked. 

“Jealous?” Jem asked, “No. Are you upset with her?” 

The truth was that yes, she upset every rational thought he had ever believed himself capable of but the second truth was that he didn’t want to give up the chance that she might throw herself into his arms again. 

“No,” Will said, “You don’t need to ask her to stop on my behalf. She hasn’t done anything that made me uncomfortable.” 

“Like pull someone into your lap and kiss them?” Jem asked. 

“That was interesting,” Will said in as flat a voice as he could conjure up. 

“I apologize for it. It was wildly inappropriate and I will not do anything like that again,” Jem said squeezing his shoulders and looking like he meant it. 

A traitorous little voice came from the same place in the back of Will’s mind that insisted on reminding him that Tessa had bit her lip the same way after kissing Jem as she had before wrapping her arms around him. The voice told him that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if it did happen again. Will nodded because he didn’t trust himself to not let that voice out to ask the things it wanted to know about Tessa’s lips. 

Jem looked at him in a way that told him more than he had expected. It succeeded in blowing the thoughts of Tessa’s mouth from his mind. He’d put in so much effort to be make sure this would never happened. He'd asked Tessa to keep his declaration of love a secret. He'd never told anyone else but Magnus. And yet, Jem knew.

Jem knew. 

“Did she tell you?” Will asked. 

“No, you did,” Jem said. “I should have seen it. You’re supposed to be easy for me to read after all. Once I knew, I couldn’t imagine having missed it but I did. I found out on my death bed,” his expression went from calm to distressed to artificially cheerful in a split second, “That’s another story though, right now it is 5 in the morning and I need coffee before anything goes wrong today.” 

“I should give you lessons on deflecting topics of conversation. Honest people are terrible at lying. That was not artfully done,” Will said. 

“I’m not lying, I need coffee. Yes, I also don’t want to talk about anyone dying. Both things can be true,” Jem had been holding his shoulders the whole time. His hands were warm through the thin fabric of the shirt. Now he turned him and shoved him gently across the room. “Go get me mugs and the thing that you put milk in, the little jug thing. And sugar. You like stupid amounts of sugar in things don’t you? There should be sugar on the second shelf in a little bowl that matches the jug thing.”

Will pulled them out and laughed. The little jug and bowl did indeed match. They were made of fine white china though it was obvious that the handle to the jug had been glued back on at some point in its history. They were painted with a pair of rabbits. The dyes from the paint were just faded but not indistinct.

“My parents had this same set. I think my mother’s mother gave them to her or some such thing. I’ll bet these came from the same shop. If that’s true these must be close to two hundred years old,” Will said. 

“Probably, Tessa doesn’t own dishes bought in the last fifty years. The flatware is a rather odd collection,” Jem said. 

Will put them near the gurgling contraption that was beginning to smell like coffee before settling in to watch Jem cook with a kind of fascination. It wasn’t that he was particularly good at it or particularly bad at it. It was just that cooking was not a thing that gentlemen of good breeding did. Other people cooked. A lady might bake but not a man. 

He got about five minutes of watching before Jem started giving orders. The first few instructions were easy, chopping things into small pieces wasn’t difficult. He hadn’t thought breaking eggs would be difficult either but Will hadn’t cracked an egg since he was ten years old and had helped his mother make Christmas tarts.   
Jem leaned over the dish when it was done, his shoulder bumping Will’s. He’d only done it a handful of times but it was becoming a comfort. The warmth and weight of him when he leaned in pulled all of Will’s attention.

“Omelettes aren’t meant to be crunchy,” he said and Will responded with a swear word but picked out the bits of shell that had fallen inside and then wiped his fingers on Jem’s sleeve. Jem responded to that with a different swear word and Will thought that was the worst he would get. 

It wasn’t. Tessa walked into the room just as Jem blew a spoonful of flour into Will’s face. There wasn’t even flour in any of the recipes they were using. He’d pulled it out for the purpose of flinging it around. 

Tessa said a completely different swear word as she back pedaled out of the room. 

“Madhouse,” Tessa said from the hallway. “Flour will catch fire you idiots, if you burn down my house after last night I will never forgive you.” 

“You’d forgive me,” Jem said kissing her on the cheek as he walked by to put coffee things in the other room. He’d simply dropped the fight when she’d appeared. Will brushed white powder out of his hair and off his face. Tessa smiled at him from the doorway and it was a smile that made his heart rate change. It was a smile that spoke of a home he would never get to have. 

This place was a home and with the two of them in it it was obvious that it was their home. The colours were rich and varied, greens and browns, reds and purples, a splash of yellow in the form of a silk banner that hung from one wall. The books and the music stand and the art were all theirs. The space felt personal in a way that the drawing rooms that Will was used to never did. 

Will drank his coffee but didn’t try to fill the silence as it stretched. It was awkward and then it wasn’t. He had sat in silence with Jem hundreds of times without the need to fill the empty spaces with nattering. The questions he wanted answered could wait. There wasn’t room for him here but he liked the idea that he could pretend that this was his home too.

 


	10. Chapter 10

Jem played snippets of things on the violin but wouldn’t commit to a piece. It might have been annoying but it made Tessa smile. It was a little like knowing what he was thinking. She knew exactly which melody was playing in his head and why he wouldn’t play it while Will was in the room. He wanted to play the story of Will’s life. Each snippet of song failed when he started to turn it into that other melody and stopped himself.

Jem sat by the window with his feet up on a second chair and picked at the strings or ruffled through the sheet music in the shallow wooden box beside him. Every few months he’d reorganize the music based on some new system but within days it would be a disaster again. It was a mess right now. He knew where things were but it was all shuffled together in a way that made no sense to her at all.

Tessa could see both of them from where she stood on the balcony. Will had been reading through her book titles. She was waiting for him to start asking questions but he hadn’t yet. He was just pulling things off the shelves and reading the covers or a few pages before sliding them back into place. She found herself watching his fingers as they ran over the spines or pinched at pages. His fingers were long and more graceful than fingers really had a right to be.

She had spent a life time waking up to graceful fingers playing through her hair or over her skin. She looked back at the city and hoped that the darkness would cover the fact that she was blushing. Some memories were just words or fragments of images but others still held all their strength. This one came with enough force that she half expected to find his hands on her shoulder on their way to trace down her back.

Sunrise was coming and she could see the sky starting to lighten. She tested her magic but it was still stretched too thin to work properly. She was no longer deeply ill but she hadn’t regained enough strength to do any magic without it hurting.

“Will?” she said and braced herself for when he looked up from the bookshelf to meet her gaze. Dark blue and unmistakable his eyes kept shaking her fragile ability to keep her composure. She wasn’t going to sob on him again. She simply wasn’t. He’d been treating her carefully since she’d done it and she didn’t want to make him more nervous.

She reached out a hand and motioned him out onto the balcony. Jem looked up at them but didn’t say anything. He ruffled back through the music again and started an actual song instead of just fragments. She couldn’t name it but it was all softness and quiet mornings. Will started to take her hand and then pulled away. She leaned forward and grabbed his hand before he was out of reach. Will across the room she could manage but Will close enough to touch wasn’t something she could resist.

“Don’t look down right away,” she said smiling at him and holding his hand. There were these moments of hesitation in him when she touched him before he responded and the smile seemed to break the hesitation and his fingers wrapped around hers.

“What am I looking at?” he asked.

“Sunrise over New York,” she said pulling him in a little closer to her and the railing. He was warm and tense. Her voice was quieter and gentler than it needed to be when she said, “We’re very high.”

Jem was still playing and Tessa looked over at him. He gave her a small smile. He was barefoot which had once seemed almost indecent to her but had long ago just become a part of Jem at home. It was either the battered blue shoes or nothing. He hadn’t bothered getting dressed and the pajamas he wore had a hole in one of the legs, probably a gift from the cat. He looked like home. She held his eyes and let the music wrap itself around her for a moment until she was steady enough to speak to Will.

“The sun rises along the buildings here,” she said pointing past him with her free hand. The sun was just breaking over the tops of the lower buildings to paint the world in orange. Will followed her finger and she took a second to stare not at the view but at him. He’d been beautiful every day of his life but there was something incredible about the lines of his face in the early morning light. Unconsciously she squeezed his hand a little tighter and he answered it.

They stood together until she wavered. The floor was suddenly unsteady or maybe it was her feet. Her balance went. She leaned her forehead against his shoulder and closed her eyes. Her fingers were holding onto his not for comfort but to keep herself upright.

“Tess?” he said.

“I’ll be fine,” she said but had to force the words out. Panic curled in the pit of her stomach but she was too tired to give it the voice it wanted.

“Inside, now,” Jem said. She hadn’t noticed the music stopping but he stood in the doorway looking alert and concerned. The bow was in his hand but not the instrument itself.

Inside the apartment the weakness faded and she could see what had alarmed Jem. The warding was usually invisible but when it was under attack it glowed. It was a sort of built in warning.

It glowed now.

Lines of magic were joined by knots of runes. Unlike most warding, Tessa’s wasn’t purely warlock magic. There were Gray Book runes scattered here and there. The mix of magics made the barrier stronger. She’d learned that while still living with the Clave. By calling on two types of magic, she had woven stronger barriers with less effort. It was technically illegal but no one had ever been in a position to notice except for Jem.

“We need to leave,” she said in a moment of panic. “If it comes down whatever is pushing on it will be able to get in.”

“I don’t think you can. You started collapsing before the wards started glowing. I’m not taking you out into whatever it is,” Jem told her. He waved at the walls and the space in front of the windows where the magic glowed and pulsed, “It’s holding. You spent months on this, Tess, it will hold.”

“Were you expecting this?” Will asked. “This is some powerful defensive magic.”

“It’s better to expect the worst,” Tessa said with a little half shrug. She just barely caught Will’s concerned look before the magic shuddered and pulled her attention. She didn’t need to hold the spells, they’d been drawn and cast and held on their own but the crackling magic still set her on edge. Usually if she needed to she could catch the magic if it started to fall but that wouldn’t be possible today. It brought that twist of panic back.

Tessa turned and went for the phone. Will still held her hand and he didn’t drop it immediately. She was walking away before his fingers let go of hers. He was lost and confused for a moment and Jem caught her eye and the silent agreement to pretend they hadn’t seen it passed between them. Will was smooth and confident again a moment later.

At the phone, she dialed a familiar number and Jem caught up to her and stood close. He didn’t touch her first. As the phone rang she shut her eyes and leaned. She knew that Jem would be there and he was, solid and warm and wonderful. She’d been pretending that it was over, that this morning was peaceful and safe and not the day after an attack in a battle that wasn’t over.

“Magnus?” she said when he answered.

“No, me,” Alec said. “Um, Alec.”

“I know who you are Alec,” she said. “Something’s trying to get into my house, can Magnus come and check my warding for me?”

She hadn’t introduced herself but either call display or the familiarity of her voice had identified her. She was surprised by how even her voice sounded. She sounded calm and confident and unruffled even to her own ears.

She was none of those things. She was still fighting back the urge to cry over Will and nothing had attacked her wardings at any of her houses in a long time. In five years, every home she and Jem had built together was safe and secure. That something was trying to batter down the walls now was deeply unsettling.

And with that thought, she was immediately angry. How dare this bastard follow them home?

“I have to go the Institute, like now, fifteen minutes ago really,” Alec said.

“Oh,” Tessa said the flash of anger fading as quickly as it had come on. She couldn’t yell at Alec over this. Being angry wasn’t going to help and so she just let it drain away.

Magnus and Jem had befriended the whole little crew of Shadowhunters from the New York Institute and Tessa had found herself spending time with them. Not a lot, not really, but more time than she had spent with Shadowhunters since she had left the Clave behind a lifetime before.

Of that group, Alec was the one Tessa knew best. It didn’t matter that Jace was family or that she had known Clary since she was an infant. Tessa often saw Clary as Jocelyn’s child more than as a woman in her own right though that was changing a little more each time they spoke. She hadn’t told Jace who she was, it wasn’t a conversation she knew how to start, and the secret stood between any true attempts at building a friendship.

None of that baggage stood between her and the Lightwoods. Alec was the one she knew best because Alec was the one that Magnus cared about. Magnus had married him. Magnus had built a life with him. Tessa loved Alec for making Magnus happy, for bringing Magnus back to earth when he needed it.

Alec was the calm center to everyone else’s hurricanes. He was the counter balance to Jace’s impulses. He brought out all the softer parts of Magnus that no one else ever got to see. Magnus was not often a person with a home, places to stay yes, lavish places to stay but never really a home. Tessa had never seen him build something like he had built with Alec.

She looked up at the wards. Nothing was giving an inch. They wobbled with the attacks but didn’t bend. Jem was right. Now that the initial panic and rage of being attacked at home was gone she could see that. The wards weren’t going to collapse. There were few places that were safer.

“It’s secure here. He can bring her, just leave the portal open in case we need to drop her back through,” Tessa said to Alec.

The little girl Alec and Magnus had taken in was only two years old. Far too young to be left alone. Neither of them had quite known what to do with a baby when they’d found themselves with her sitting in their laps. Magnus did not have many friends who had had children and so he had called Tessa more than either of them admitted to ask all manner of questions from the exceptionally mundane to the terrifyingly profound. How to deal with teething was a very different sort of question from how to tell if you were ruining a child’s future. Tessa had fielded many of them.

“I’m not sure about that,” Alec started but then the phone rustled.

“What?” Magnus growled into the phone.

“Why are you so pissy?” Tessa asked.

“Oh,” he said, “Not who I thought you were. And don’t ask who I thought you were. What’s up?”

She explained what was going on and heard the flurry of argument - though not the actual words as Magnus and Alec talked with the phone held away.

“Should I bring wine?” Magnus asked when the argument had settled. Tessa wasn’t sure what it had been about or what the decision had been.

“Only if you can find that blue label stuff from Paris on such short notice,” she said. Tessa didn’t have many true friends and she had no friends who knew her as well as Magnus did. It didn’t need explained what he was really asking or what she was really saying.

In first years just after she had lost Will, Tessa had found Magnus in Paris. They had drank cheap wine while talking about love and loss and whether it was all worth it. The night that Tessa had started making lists of reasons to keeping moving forward they had been drinking their way through a case of blue labeled Bordeaux. It had been one of the few cheap wines they’d found that was truly good.

The first list that night had just been names of people she loved but there would be others in the months and years to come. Lists of places to see and things to do and books to read. She still had them all, bundled together in a little leather folder. She hadn’t read any of them since writing them but she held onto them in case she ever needed them again.

Magnus was asking her how upset she was to have Will there. She was telling him that it hurt but she was holding herself together. Not even Jem would be able to understand what she was saying.

“Don’t doubt my skills, Gray. If that vineyard still exists, I’ll find it. Give me ten and I’ll drop in,” he said.

She laughed softly and looked at the warding again. It was still being tested but it wasn’t showing any weak spots. It wasn’t an attack now, it was an exploration. Magnus might be able to see weakness that she missed as he was simply more experienced. She was deeply grateful that he would come by just to check.

Tessa turned to Will and Jem and found them involved in a conversation that didn’t include as many words as normal people used. They were talking through the same contingencies and worries that Tessa was running in her head but they were doing it with two people instead of just one. When Tessa had sat down to talk to Magnus, Jem had pulled Will to the side and she could just barely hear their conversation.

She could count number of times she’d seen them together like this, bouncing ideas back and forth, both alive and painted in vibrant colours. It didn’t feel like a high enough number. All of the reservations Jem had with other people fell away with Will. Tessa had never seen it from the outside before.

She didn’t put herself into it. She slipped out of the room and waved off Jem’s silent offer to come with her. Will didn’t notice. He would look up in ten minutes and be surprised that she’d moved but for now all the intensity of his energy was focused on Jem.

The pretext that she was going to check her warding in the other rooms fell away as soon as she was alone. She wrapped her arms around her waist and gathered all the little pieces of her heart together. They’d been broken and regathered so many times that it took a lot to rattle them loose. Each shard had been fit back into place and held there first with effort then by habit and then by Jem.

It wasn’t her loss that left her leaning against the wall with its glowing pattern of magic. It was Jem’s. Jem who hadn’t had a lifetime with Will there to bounce ideas and jokes off of. Jem who kept cracking little half smiles whenever he was reminded that Will was in the room. Tessa had thought once that it must be easier to not have the weight of those years together to press on the broken pieces but it wasn’t true.

Jem wasn’t crying and she had to pull herself in tight to avoid doing it for him. Her anger flashed back. When the next prod came at the warding she hurled the last little bit of magic she had left at it. The wards stretched and amplified the magic. She hoped that it had worked and it had hurt to be on the other side it.

“Leave us alone,” she said and sank down to put her head on her knees as the dizziness came back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just take a second and imagine Magnus calling Tessa and asking for baby advice. Just imagining it makes me happy.


	11. Different Magics

They found Tessa curled up on the floor in the bedroom and Jem was hit by a wave of guilt that was so strong it was almost nausea. He gathered her into his arms without being able to speak. He’d been so worried about Will, so glad that Will was there, that he hadn’t been paying nearly enough attention to how well she was. She had stood strong and confident, her voice had been clear, she’d made eye contact and smiled. He hadn’t realized that she was weak enough to collapse.

“Don’t worry,” Tessa said into his neck as he pulled her in close. He couldn’t even find a voice to tell her how sorry he was but she twisted her fingers into his shirt and pulled his attention down to her. He didn’t need to say it. She could read it on his face.

“I’m fine, I’m stupid but I’m fine. I hit back and I shouldn’t have, I wasn’t strong enough for it but I’m not hurt. You can stop looking at me like that any time now,” she said.

“You’re a liar on all counts. You are not stupid and you are not fine,” Jem said. If she had demanded he put her down he might have believed her when she said that she was fine but she let herself be carried. Tessa hated to be coddled. That she leaned in and didn’t argue was more worrying than finding her on the floor.

He took her back to the main room because that was where the heart of the magic was. Though the warding was literally fading back into the woodwork, he wanted to be where he could see it if it flared again before Magnus arrived. He didn’t put her down this time. He sat down and she arranged herself so that she could lean into him. Her hair smelled of some sort of floral shampoo but the harsh tang of the fire lingered beneath it.

He pressed his mouth to her hair and breathed in the scent of her. Silent Brothers had no use for the sense of smell so it vanished during the initiation. He couldn’t remember if it was a specific rune or a side effect of something else. He’d been surprised when he left how strongly scents were tied to memories. It was a thing he had forgotten. This mix of floral and acrid and under it all the smell of her skin would call up memories of this day for decades.

The guilt eased as she whispered little reassuring things and jokes that didn’t make sense and cuddled herself in tight to his side. They weren’t alone but the moment didn’t have space for other people. Will wasn’t far away but he must have understood that he wasn’t a part of this. Jem felt his attention on them but then he disappeared into the kitchen. A part of Jem wanted to apologize but that would have meant getting up and he wasn’t ready to let go of Tessa yet. He wouldn’t be until he was sure she was recovering.

When Magnus arrived a few minutes later with a tiny blue hurricane in his arms, it was Will who met them. They didn’t come in through the door. They simply appeared in the room and Jem heard Will’s surprised noise and then a child’s giggle.

“Your warding looks fine,” Magnus said from the rail above Jem’s head. He had appeared in the entrance way and now looked down over the living room. He wore a bright yellow t-shirt advertising a place in Peru and he looked almost normal by Magnus standards. There was glitter in his hair but it looked less like it was there intentionally than that it simply couldn’t be washed out anymore.

“Ten minutes ago it was a Christmas tree,” Jem said.

“That’s a strange decorating choice for July,” Magnus told him.

The little girl perched in Magnus’s arms had skin an almost indigo blue with ears just too large and too pointed to be human. Not quite a bat’s but closer to that than human. Her hair was a riot of black curls and her eyes were a sky blue that matched Alec’s surprisingly well. She wore denim overalls with flowers embroidered on the knees, a pink t-shirt and she carried a plastic sword in one hand. She brandished the weapon and giggled again and Jem smiled in spite of everything.

“Hello Banana,” he said.

“Anna!” Tessa said turning over so that she could lie down with her head on Jem’s lap and look up at the little girl.

“Tessa magic,” Anna said and it was half order, half giggle.

“No Tessa magic today, little one,” Tessa said. “I’m not feeling well.”

“Rainbow Tessa magic,” Anna said pouring emphasis onto the word rainbow. Will looked bemused as he looked between the child and Magnus with his eyebrows up. He looked anywhere that wasn’t at Tessa. Jem felt a flare of guilt for flaunting their togetherness but letting go of her felt too much like abandoning her. Their fingers were twisted together and the little knot of their hands rested on her stomach. Jem couldn’t leave her alone when she was like this.

Magnus reached a hand out behind the little girl’s head where she couldn’t see it and whispered a spell. Tessa’s hair spilled down rainbow from the top of her head. It was spread out across his lap and the strands that had been brown were now bright pink and orange. It was a glamour and if Jem worked on it he could see through it but it was a very good glamour.

“No,” Anna shook her head. “No. Tessa magic. Not Daddy magic, Tessa magic.”

Magnus came down the stairs and deposited the child on top of Tessa. Tessa struggled to sit up before the toddler could take a seat in the middle of her chest and poke her in the nose. Instead the girl had to take a seat on her lap and poke her in the nose. Jem couldn’t see her face but he knew the radiant smile she always gave the little girl.

“She can tell the difference?” Will asked. He had followed Magnus down and was still looking for an explanation.

“She’s a warlock baby,” Tessa said. “She can tell the difference between her magics. Most warlock babies aren’t raised by warlocks but it’s as easy as learning your colours if you have a good teacher. Do you have a good teacher Banana?”

“Daddy says he going to teach me swords,” Anna brandished her plastic sword and Tessa had to duck back against Jem to avoid taking it to the face. She wasn’t talking about Magnus. Magnus was not the person you wanted to be teaching you ‘swords.’

“Someday, when you are not so small,” Magnus said.

“Banana here is Magnus’s daughter,” Jem said for Will’s benefit. “She was only about a week old when they took her in. Her name is Anna Lightwood and she is two. She once punched me in the face and gave me a black eye. She claims it was an accident.”

“Two and a half,” Anna said with all the indignant toddler attitude she could muster. Though they shared no blood, she had learned to roll her eyes in exactly the same way as her father. From Alec she had collected a serious smile that started small and bloomed for only special people.

“Lightwood?” Will asked at the same time.

“Bane isn’t really a good family name,” Magnus said. He stood with his back to everyone near the wall. His fingers flicked infrequently as he looked over the wards. “Alec wanted to make it very clear to his father, the Clave and anyone else who thought they’d have an opinion on her that she was a part of the family. The Lightwoods have historically been such a bland family, they need a little blue on the family tree, I think.”

“You married a Lightwood and had a baby,” Will said in a very flat voice. Jem glanced at him and he was looking back. They shared a tiny flicker of smile.

“Adopted technically. We didn’t actually make her, there are issues of biology at play in that,” Magnus said frowning up at the bookcases though he wasn’t really seeing books. He was scanning magic.

“I thought all Lightwoods looked alike,” Will said with a wider version of that flicker of smile he’d shown Jem. Magnus turned and looked at him out the corner of his eye. The light in the room caught on his cat’s eye and it shone gold for a moment.

“Gildenstern and Gertrude or whatever the most recent generation was called when you were running about London did look alike. I stand by that. They were better men than their father but most gnats are better men than their father was. My god, it’s been 150 years and I still remember him. That’s saying something I prefer to forget the unpleasant ones,” Magnus said, “Alec is not them, neither the sons nor the father.”

“But he is a Shadowhunter and he is a Lightwood. The Clave allowed him to marry a man, a not human man, and give a not human child a Shadowhunter name?” Will said.

“Allow implies that permission was asked,” Magnus said. “I am the warlock representative on the Council and Alec almost died in a demon realm saving the world. Blind eye is probably more apt. They just pretend Alec doesn’t do things they don’t like. They attempt to pretend he doesn’t exist but no one has tried to push him out of the Clave.”

“Yet,” Tessa said.

“You’re a ball of fucking sunshine aren’t you?” Magnus said over his shoulder and then made a face that said he hadn’t intended to swear in the same room as the little girl. Anna wasn’t paying any attention. She was busy making faces at Tessa.

“Shiny and bright,” Tessa said with faux enthusiasm before her voice became serious and she said, “The Clave doesn’t like different and the Clave doesn’t like change.”

“I am aware,” Magnus said. “I have known them longer than you have.”

“But they’ve never tried to destroy your family. It’s a singular experience,” Tessa said and before Will could ask a question she wasn’t prepared to answer she pressed on, “How is the warding? What needs adjusted?”

What followed was a conversation that made no sense to Jem. As much as he tried to understand Tessa’s magic it never got any clearer. She played with the baby and talked about magic and Jem just watched her. He watched the way she held Anna like having a child in her arms was the most natural thing in the world. The girl kept trying to pick pieces of glamour off her hair and Tessa untangled her fingers again and again without losing the thread of the conversation she was having with Magnus.

There was a lull in the conversation that told Jem he had missed something. He looked a question at Will first. It was an old habit that had come back immediately. Will was here so he looked to Will first but Will was as distracted by Tessa making faces and laughing at the ones Anna made as he was. He looked to Magnus instead.

Magnus gave him a look that made him wish he knew the warlock better. There were nuances to the head tilt and half smile that Jem didn’t understand at all. Tessa would have understood it but she was still too distracted by the baby.

“When did it start?” Magnus repeated.

“About a half hour ago, maybe less,” Jem said though they were all still watching the show that Tessa and Anna were putting on.

“I should bring her around here more often,” Magnus said. “Anastasia what are you doing to Tessa’s hair?”

“Ah-nn-ah,” Anna told him still twisting her fingers into Tessa’s hair. She might have been trying to separate the colours but she was only succeeding in making a tangle.

“Mariana?” Magnus suggested. He didn’t conceal his smile.

“Anna,” she said as she stuck her lower lip out in a pout. It was as contrived as Magnus pretending he didn’t know her name. Jem tried very hard not to let himself imagine what it might be like to have a daughter of his own to tease.

“Antonietta, let go of her hair,” Magnus said and Anna released the ball of still rainbow hair that she had been holding in both tiny fists. Some places were brown again where she had succeeded in stripping off the glamour with her unreliable baby magic.

“I am Anna,” she said crossing her arms in a gesture that was obviously stolen from an adult in her life and made Will start to laugh hard enough that he had to catch a hand on the bookshelf.

“I swear you looked at me exactly like that the night I bled all over Camille’s carpet,” Will said looking at the girl and then back at Magnus. Anna turned the glare on Will and looked at him a little confused. Jem suspected she hadn’t noticed there was a stranger in the room before that moment.

Tessa waved him over and he came to sit on the low coffee table in front of the sofa. He sat just far enough away that he wasn’t really sitting with them. Tessa had gathered all her hair and tossed it back over her shoulder and Jem idly played with the strands.

He had woken into a world that treated touch very differently than the century of his birth and for a long time he had found the public displays of affection uncomfortable. Some things were not appropriate when other people were around but he’d stopped letting many century old manners get in the way of touching Tessa. It had been conscious at first but it had become almost an instinct. He held her hand, let his arm linger around her waist, played with her hair.

He did it without thinking about it until he caught the flicker of Will’s attention and dropped his hand. Tessa either didn’t notice or ignored them. She reached out and waited until Will put his hand in hers and then pulled him a little closer. He let himself be drawn in so he sat across from them. Magnus dropped down beside him and gave Tessa a look that might have been a warning.

“Anna,” Tessa said turning the girl to look at Will. She was suddenly and uncharacteristically shy, leaning into Tessa and looking at her father for reassurance. “Anna this is Will. He’s a friend of ours. He comes from way back when and proper introductions were important then. Can I introduce him?”

Magnus nodded at the little girl who turned and nodded at Tessa.

“William Herondale, may I present Miss Anna Lightwood,” Tessa said in a mock formal tone. Will barely hesitated before he gave the girl a little bow and then kissed her on the back of her tiny blue hand. She giggled again and it broke the spell of the shyness.

“You got funny magic,” she said to Will. She stood up in Tessa’s lap and leaned forward to push her hands against Will’s face. She did it far faster than anyone expected. Will jumped in a way that was undignified enough to be called flailing and Magnus caught the child before she fell to the floor. Tessa laughed short and hard as much in surprise as anything else.

“Funny magic?” Will asked when he’d caught his breath after the shock of having a child launch herself at his head.

“Funny funny,” Anna told him and then started to giggle again as though it was truly comedic. Magnus held the giggling child in his arms and looked between her and Will a few times. Whatever she could see, he couldn’t.

“Stay still,” Magnus said and then reached out to do exactly what his daughter had done a moment before. He grabbed Will’s head so that his palm was against Will’s forehead. Will made a protesting noise but didn’t jerk away. It was a testament to how much he trusted Magnus. Jem couldn’t imagine very many people who Will would tolerate grabbing his face.

Magnus frowned and passed Anna to Jem with one arm. He collected the squirming child and returned her to Tessa. She crawled out of Tessa’s lap and back into his immediately. Tessa sat facing away from Jem as she leaned against his shoulder. Her bewitched hair fell against Jem and Anna sat on his lap so she could reach for it. All Tessa’s attention was on Will and Magnus. Jem was left to manage the baby by himself. He pulled Tessa’s hair away from tiny fingers and dropped it back over her shoulder to the other side.

Will pressed his lips together in a line and everyone waited for Magnus to make a diagnosis of what ‘funny magic’ actually meant. Will was annoyed and the longer Magnus fussed with magic no one else could sense the more annoyed he got. Jem leaned forward and kicked him gently in the leg in a warning that Will didn’t really need any more. Will’s expression smoothed out into exaggerated calm. Jem snorted. Will looking calm and serene while someone held him by the face was hilarious.

“It isn’t coming from him,” Magnus said. “Anna?”

Deprived of Tessa’s hair to pull, Anna had flopped sideways over Jem’s arm and was pulling Tessa’s stack of paperbacks apart because she thought it was funny that each time she dropped one Jem would pick it up again. She looked at Magnus and sat as still as Jem had ever seen her. She frowned. He rarely called her by her proper name without some bizarre addition. Jem had heard her called Anna the Glitter Zebra once and Ms Anna McFanna Ice Queen another.

“Can you tell me what the funny magic looks like?” Magnus asked her gently. She held out her hands to him and he scooped her up. Will looked relieved to have the hand off his face. Jem loved watching Magnus with Anna. She managed to turn him from High Warlock to marshmallow without any effort at all.

Anna waved her hands at Will’s head and he leaned back just a bit in case he was about to get his face grabbed again. “Funny, bubbly, orange,” she pronounced.

“Bubbly,” Magnus said. “Like it’s floating?”

“Bubbles! Orange and bubbles and canIhaveacookieplease?” Anna said running the last phrase together until it was a single word.

“You can have a cookie with your lunch,” Magnus told her before turning back to Will, “There’s a spell following you or maybe it is just portal residue. That couldn’t have been a small portal you stepped through. We’re going to need a seer who isn’t distracted by cookies and princess dresses, I’ll see who I can call.”

“Lijing,” Tessa suggested.

“Is a psycho,” Magnus said.

“Is a friend of mine,” Tessa said.

“Is a psycho friend of yours similar to the other psycho friend who dragged you to Europe to play with portals and pyromaniacs. You need less psycho friends,” Magnus told her.

“If I didn’t have psycho friends, I wouldn’t have you,” Tessa said in a sweet voice. Magnus rolled his eyes and Jem knew the teasing smile Tessa gave him without needing to see it.

“It isn’t safe for me to stay here,” Will said interrupting the conversation and pulling everyone’s attention back to someplace that Jem didn’t really want it to be. Will pressed on, “I’d lead the pyromaniac as you call him directly to you.”

“He’d find us anyway,” Tessa said and she changed the way she was sitting just slightly. She shifted so that she leaned against Jem rather than sat beside him. It was invisible but he could feel it. He found her hand and hooked his little finger with hers. She didn’t relax but she squeezed his finger in silent gratitude. Will was leaving and though he would only be going across town it was still leaving.

“He’s right though and he needs to let Maryse ask him a thousand questions,” Magnus said.

Tessa nodded and Jem could feel the unhappiness wash off of her. He wondered if the others could tell. These were the two other people in her entire life that knew her as well as he did. Did they know what the little moment of straightening her shoulders or the smile that didn’t quite make it to her eyes mean?

Tessa very gently resisted the suggestion that Will needed to leave but she didn’t actually argue against it. Jem couldn’t come up with a consistent argument as to why he needed to stay so he didn’t make one either. Will’s mood was harder to decipher but he left with Magnus with a smile and a wave and a barely suppressed look in his eyes that was all conflict.

“He’s real,” Tessa said when they were alone.

“He’s real,” Jem confirmed.

“I don’t know what to do about that,” she said.

“Me neither,” Jem said.

There was a long silence as she cuddled into him so that her head rested on his chest and his heartbeat knocked gently beneath her ear. He pulled the knit blanket a little closer around her. They had been two people with a shared missing piece for decades and now suddenly the missing piece was there. He just wasn’t quite the right shape to fit in where he should have. 


	12. Reminders

Will had only been staying at the Institute for two days and he missed Tessa and Jem’s little flat far more than he was willing to admit. The New York Institute wasn’t nearly as settled as the London Institute he had left. It was a place that didn’t serve breakfast or dinner but simply left the kitchen door open so you could grab what you wanted. There were few Shadowhunters permanently posted there and a large number who cycled through using portals to appear and disappear almost on a whim.

The Arrivals didn’t make things better. They were a scattered group and the Shadowhunters were keeping them all busy doing different things. Will had seen Alison but not Edith or the others since he’d come in by portal with Magnus. As Shadowhunters, Will had expected that he and Alison would be treated with more respect than the others but that didn’t seem to be the case.

Everyone was treated equally.

They were all treated as though they were idiots and inconveniences.

He had learned the names of the group of roving Nephilim who all knew Jem but hadn’t really made any attempts at making friends. He wasn’t sure he remembered how to make friends with strangers. He had been relearning how to be a friend to the people he already cared for when he’d stepped through the portal.

There were little flurries of curious conversation and then everyone would be called out to deal with other things and Will was left behind the Institute walls and warding with the other arrivals. There were little magical tests done in back alleys not too far from the building but beyond that he wasn’t allowed anywhere else.

Two days was enough of that. Three hours was enough of that. He had started wandering London at 13. Now he had nothing to wander but hallways. It might not have been so bad if it were his own Institute but it was not.

This was an Institute filled with people who were distantly related to people he knew. When Magnus had introduced him as “William Herondale” he had received all manner of curious glances. The Herondales were a family name that he’d expected to die with him but it hadn’t. The blonde Shadowhunter Jem had introduced only as Jace was a Herondale though there was some joking about his name that Will was too shocked to pay much attention to.

Magnus’s Alec gave him a curious look that in other situations might have made Will badger him to explain but at that moment he was being introduced to Fairchilds and Lightwoods and kept expecting mad old Starkweather’s great grandchildren to start popping out of the walls.

Alec and Jace had been making an effort to come and see him and their friend Simon, the only one of the little troupe of them with a last name that Will didn’t know, had brought him things to read. Tessa had already brought him a bag of books with little notes tucked into the front covers about when it was written and whether or not she thought he would like it.

He’d been sitting in the dining room at the time listening without fully comprehending the sheer number of changes that had occurred in the Clave over the most recent decade. Jace and Alec editorialized and when Clary arrived all red hair and sitting on tables it became impossible to sort out the details though there was enough information for Will to understand the scope of the change.

The Clave had always seemed immovable to Will. He’d never fully shaken his mother’s belief that they could never be reformed. He could see the good in Shadowhunters but he had always assumed that the Clave would always be one wrong move away from torturing people who did not deserve it. Now they had Downworld councils and all sorts of new rules and accords being drafted.

Tessa had appeared in that crowd around the same time Clary started telling a story about Maia. She sat down beside him with the bag on her lap and the shy smile he was starting to expect from her. Since she’d recovered herself, she’d been warm and kind but shy and just a bit distant. She brought him books but rather than sit with him and tell him about them she left notes. He tried to convince himself that this was better and that he didn’t want her any closer.

It was easier.

He told himself that over and over.

Easier was better.

They were going through the pile of books and Tessa’s hair kept falling over her face and Will kept having to curl his fingers around the page in hand to resist touching it. Simon managed to accidentally sneak up on them both and when he leaned over the table to pull one of Tessa’s recommendations towards himself, Will jumped.

“This is literally a hundred years old,” Simon said flipping it in his hands to read the title as Will composed himself enough to remember that there were people in the room beyond Tessa and himself. Most of them were involved in a debate about where to order dinner.

“98 actually and that is a first edition so you had better not have doritos dust on your fingers,” Tessa said.

“I bought you a present,” Simon said looking slightly offended at the suggestion that he might have doritos dust on his finger tips. He didn’t really look like a Shadowhunter to Will. He didn’t carry himself properly. Shadowhunters were gentry and this boy was not. He was not a gentleman and he seemed proud of it, all big, floppy gestures and sarcastic comments and dirty fingers, “I heard you had gotten hurt in Italy so I thought I’d do something nice since I’m such a good friend. Do you bring injured warlocks gifts, is that appropriate?”

“It depends on what it is,” Tessa said smiling. Will reappraised Simon not as Jace’s friend but as Tessa’s. He wasn’t a gentleman but he was bright and enthusiastic and Will could see why Tessa might befriend someone like him. Simon pulled a white paper bag out of his bag where it was slung across his shoulder.

“Are there men in tights? If there are men in tights, I won’t like it,” she told him.

“This is not classic superhero stuff. It’s called Runaways,” Simon passed a thin but oversized book over to Tessa and she took it with a skeptical look as he launched into an explanation of the story and the author and why it wasn’t like the stuff that Tessa apparently hated.

Will picked the book out of her hand as she talked to Simon. Simon was an ascendant, rare enough on its own, and parabatai to the red headed Clary who was currently sitting on the table with her feet up on Jace’s knee. He sometimes wore glasses he didn’t need and always wore a t-shirt with a joke printed on it that Will did not understand. He was also one of the least pretentious people Will had ever met and that alone made him likable.

“It’s an art book,” Will said paging through it, “Are they painted?”

“It’s called a graphic novel,” Simon said and something about the light in his eyes told Will that this had the potential to be the start of a very passionate explanation.

“Comic book,” Tessa interrupted before he could start. “They’re picture stories for children.”

“Not for children!” Simon snapped. “Read it before you pass judgment. You liked Sandman.”

“Yes, Sandman is an exception to your entire ridiculous genre of caped heroes and silly villains,” Tessa said and then her whole demeanor changed. All the years and all the things that stood between them were suddenly gone with Tessa’s shyness as she turn to Will and gestured with her hands, “You should read Sandman, the bit where he’s adapted the Tempest is just brilliantly done. The images and the dialogue and the way the story fits together. But don’t listen to him about Spiderman. Spiderman is as stupid as it sounds.”

“It isn’t,” Simon said, “The themes-”

“Are overshadowed by the idiocy of a man getting bitten by a spider and developing spider powers and wearing a costume to fight a man dressed as an octopus,” Tessa said.

“It does sound silly,” Will said, “Though I did once hear of that happening to a man in Kent though it was a spider demon, not a normal spider. I think he started eating flies and making webs in corners. All very strange.”

“HA!” Simon said, “All the stories are true. Even Spiderman.”

“Shut up,” Tessa said. She swatted Will in the arm, “Don’t encourage him.”

The same afternoon, a few hours after Tessa had left, Simon had dropped off a second collection of books, all of them thin and colourful to add to Tessa’s pile. Will had started with hers though he’d leafed through Simon’s as well. He hadn’t had as much time for it as he might have liked.

He had lessons.

The lessons were in the “interest of normalcy” he had been told. The tutor was a young woman who was about twenty five and was giving lessons to both Will and Alison. The Downworlders hadn’t been invited. The lessons were not about the history of the world that they had missed. They were about the same bland and mind numbing bits of physiology and demon lore that Will had been taught in lessons at home.

“Either she is very stupid or the courses of study have been greatly reduced in recent years,” Will muttered to Alison about an hour into the first one of these lessons. He had been given a pencil and a piece of paper and he was trying his best not to behave as a child and throw the pencil at the tutor’s head as she explained the differences between animal demons and the higher demons.

Alison walked out a few minutes later, “I’m 21, I should not longer be expected to attend lessons.”

Will felt sorry for the poor woman and her carefully planned lesson. She had a little page of notes she kept referring to. She was four years late for the lesson to be in the least bit helpful but she’d put in so much effort. The look on her face when Alison had left was enough to keep Will from following. He wasn’t sure 30 minutes later that he was truly as committed to kindness as he thought he was.

His salvation came from the same person that his salvation had always come from.

Jem appeared in the doorway and frowned at the tutor just a little bit. She was facing the wrong way to see it but Will cracked a smile and she turned to see Jem and suddenly got very tense. Jem’s slightly arched eyebrow was all the evidence he gave that he had noticed. It wasn’t intended for her and Will wasn’t surprised that she didn’t mention it. They could still have conversations without speaking and it made Will smile.

“Hello Br.. Hello Zachariah,” she said.

“Good afternoon Lauren,” he said and his small smile wasn’t Jem’s it belonged to the stranger he must have been as a Silent Brother, “How are you? Your memory is excellent, that passage was almost word for word.”

Will hadn’t any idea what the passage was or even what topic they were discussing at this point. Her lesson was so carefully planned it didn’t really require any input from students.

Jem crossed the room, his eyes scanning the bookcase quickly before pulling down a volume and leafing through it. It was a heavy leather bound book with a 3 and a seal printed on the spine, a part of a series published by the Clave. Will’s lessons had been filled with books like this. He got up and followed Jem to where he laid it out on the teacher’s desk.

“See, you got it just right,” he said. It was a passage on greater demons. Will looked up at Jem, searching for the explanation for this little show. It was obviously meant to show someone something and Will wasn’t sure yet if he was the one meant to be learning.

“This is a very popular series of histories,” Jem said. “Seven volumes I think. Multiple editions though I prefer the originals. I knew the author so perhaps I have a bias but the midcentury edited versions were rewritten so heavily that they are very nearly propaganda.”

He flipped through the book so that the author’s name was visible printed on the front page. Will frowned deeply at it. The tutor looked up at him with a little frown of her own. This was a second edition with an updated foreword by the author, William O. Herondale. It had been published in 1931.

“I need to borrow Will for a little while, please excuse us,” Jem said and then pulled him out of the room. The tutor stared blankly at the backs of their heads looking startled and uncomfortable. Will only looked back once before he turned his attention to Jem. He hadn’t seen him enough in the past two days.

“I wouldn’t have thought I’d ever have the patience to write books,” Will said trying to cover up how hard it was to imagine being an old man writing books that would still be read a hundred years later. He would have been old enough to have grandchildren in 1931. Once they were clear of the room his discomfort flashed into anger.

“What was the point of that?” he snapped at Jem. He spun on his heel in the empty corridor and only just stopped himself from shoving Jem with all his strength. Jem rocked back from the impact. His face was impassive and Will’s anger flashed a little brighter but Jem didn’t give him a chance to start a rant.

“They are treating you like a lost child,” Jem said in the same calm voice he’d always used when Will had gotten angry with him. “They send you to classes, they refuse to allow you out of doors, I had to lie to Maryse to be given permission to come and see you. Someone needed reminding who you are.”

“An old man who wrote a stodgy old book,” Will said.

“An expert in your field. You took over the Institute at 18,” Jem said, “They promoted Charlotte and she appointed you. That lesson we took with Fredrich where you drew rude pictures in the book for forty minutes and then made up limericks to accompany them for the next thirty was the last formal Clave required lesson you ever took. You may like to pretend that you aren’t worth much William but you are one of the best. I say that having seen generations of Shadowhunters go from naming ceremonies through final rites. Do not sell yourself short and don’t allow others to either.”

“They promoted Charlotte?” Will said.

“Yes,” Jem said allowing Will to pretend that the rest of his statement hadn’t existed. Jem had been leading the way through the Institute, obviously knowing where he was going. When Will didn’t question him again, he turned and continued. Will fell into step and nudged Jem with a shoulder. He hoped that some of his gratitude came through in that little moment of touch. The words were too big to say. Imagining himself as an old man was upsetting. Imagining himself as someone others respected enough to buy books from was less upsetting.

The corridors of the Institute were narrow in this part and when they reached the stairs, Jem took them two at a time and stopped at the door at the top. Unwinded. Healthy. Smiling. Will stood on the stairs below him and waited.

“Are you planning on seducing me in some dark corner?” Will asked. “I feel you could do better on ambiance if that were the case.”

It was Jem’s turn to ignore him, “I want to train.”

“That’s not a problem but I’m hardly dressed for it,” Will said.

“Me neither, I don’t really care,” Jem said. “You are on house arrest. You are not meant to see anyone to preserve the sanctity of the past or some such garbage. Let’s not advertise.”

The training room looked as Will expected a training room to look and that was enough of a relief that he gave up his plans to argue. The layout was different, the ceiling was higher, some of the weapons were of a different style than he had seen before but it looked more familiar than anything else he had seen since that first glimpse of Tessa. Will ran his fingers along weapons and it all smelled of metal and leather and old wood. He closed his eyes and when Jem came to stand beside him he could almost imagine he was home.

They ran drills that to Will were so familiar that he could have done them in his sleep and had on mornings when he hadn’t gotten to bed before dawn.

They were drills that Jem kept making mistakes on. Little errors in footwork or spacing.

With any other drills it wouldn’t have seemed like much but these were things they’d been doing for years. Jem wasn’t late on the second piece of footwork. He didn’t miss a swing and bump Will’s elbow. Jem didn’t make mistakes like that. And yet, he did, over and over.

Neither of them said anything. They ran the drills until he didn’t make the mistakes any more, until they could move in time again.

Will kept waiting for him to start failing, for him to start rolling his shoulders as the weakness set in or breathing hard as his lungs protested. When he finally stopped, it wasn’t because of weakness. He dropped to the ground for a drink of water from a bottle he pulled out of a little case set against the wall. He tossed a second one at Will and it was cold.

“Some things about your future are good,” Will said as he sunk down beside him. Jem leaned back against the wall with sweat on his forehead and a smile on his lips. They’d been working hard but Jem wasn’t suffering for it.

“They’re trying to send me back,” Will said staring off into space.

“I know,” Jem said. “Tessa and Magnus are both involved in all the planning to figure out the spells. The Clave is monitoring Venice in case more people arrive but there’s been nothing.”

“I’m going to live to be an old man,” Will said.

“Yes,” Jem said, “It’ll be a good life Will. It’s a life you deserve to have.”

“It’s a life without you,” Will said. “You’re young now. To be this young now you couldn’t have been more than twenty when you joined the brothers, when you left.”

“Not even that old,” Jem said.

“Did you make it to your wedding day?” Will asked.

“Yes, it was 130 years late but yes, I made it there,” Jem said.

Will closed his eyes and tried to find that calm that he had had when he’d been looking at the weapons and it had seemed like home. It wouldn’t come. Jem had forgotten the drills because it had been more than a century since he’d done them. It had been more than a century since he’d trained with another person who could match his steps exactly.

Will had lived long enough that he had probably forgotten it too. It seemed impossible - like forgetting how to breathe - but maybe if you didn’t breathe for long enough you could forget that too.

“It’s not fair,” Will said.

“Life isn’t,” Jem said and he sounded older. Will could hear the Silent Brother in his voice. He could imagine Jem’s voice stretched paper thin and whispering through his mind and it made him want to hit things. “But if it were fair we’d never get our miracles because those aren’t fair either.”

“You deserved more than that,” Will said. “You lost more than most people will ever have.”

“I never saw it like that. I made a decision. I could have died. I should have died but if I had died I could not have been there for you or for her or for any of the people who have needed me to be there in the years since. There are worse things than dying. Have I told you that yet? It’s true. There are worse things than dying but to die and leave those you love in danger… It wasn’t something I was prepared to do. Not if I had another option,” Jem said. His eyes had stayed shut as he’d spoken and his voice came from far away in memories deep in the past.

“Tessa waited for you,” Will said.

“Tessa came back to me and I count that as one of my miracles,” Jem said. “And you’ve come back to me and that is more miracle than I had even thought to imagine.”

“And if they send me back tomorrow?” Will asked.

“Then I will be glad that I lied my way in past Maryse to see you. You deserve to go home. I would not wish you out of your own life just so I could have you in mine,” Jem said.

“I would,” Will said in a soft voice. “I would have traded anything I had in this world to give you this life. I just wish that I hadn’t had to lose the chance to be a part of it. We are one person James, we weren’t meant to be divided.”

“We were never one person,” Jem said turned to look at him and Will was surprised again to find dark eyes and golden skin instead of pale silver. “But we were also never really divided. The Brotherhood built walls between me and the world but some lines cannot be severed. You and I are tied together William. You kept me human in the dark and as the wheel turns, we turn together. When you go back, go back knowing that no matter what else changes, you and I will find each other again. Our families, our selves, our souls, they are never alone. You and I and Tess. I don’t know if you can see it yet but Tess as well. We will always find each other again.”

Will’s words failed him but he held Jem’s eyes and remembered the boy who had had eyes like that before demon drugs had started draining the life out of him. It was a promise, an oath that had already come true. They had found each other again.

Will nodded and Jem pulled him in to kiss his forehead. It was quick and soft. Lips on skin. Will was too surprised to react.

“Stand up,” Jem said when he pulled back, “I might be terrible at the double katas but I can hand you your ass in a sparing match.”

“Bullshit,” Will said.

Twenty minutes later Will had been knocked down enough times that he had almost forgotten the promise that they would find each other again and Jem’s lips had felt against his skin. Almost. 


	13. Storms

Tessa sat with her hands wrapped around her phone and a worried frown on her face. Her grip tightened and her knuckles whitened. She had dialed every number she had and had called around to find the ones that she didn’t have saved. Everything had failed.

“Where did she go?” Tessa asked and Jem didn’t have an answer for her. She had been swinging between worrying about Will and trying to find Natasha for the past few days but the panic about Nat had crested this morning. Nat hadn’t come with them when they’d crossed through the portal. Jem couldn’t remember seeing her at the battle outside the church and Will hadn’t seen her since he’d pushed her out of the gap Tessa had made in the barrier spell.

“She doesn’t disappear,” Tessa said to him. He sat close to her without touching. She was too keyed up for any offers of comfort he might make to be accepted. Without really intending to he had positioned himself so his body created a wall between her and the world beyond them. He watched her and waited for her to ask him for something he could give her.

“Maybe she did this time, it isn’t that impossible to imagine. If she was deeper in this than you thought maybe she went to ground to avoid the Clave. Stranger things have happened,” Jem said.

“She doesn’t have the discipline for going to ground. Neither does she have the self-preservation instinct. She managed to get into trouble with the mundane mafia in the 1980s and I had to drag her out of Europe because she just kept making it worse. She sent the guy who tried to kill her flowers,” Tessa told him shaking her head.

In another context it might have been a funny story but Tessa didn’t laugh as she told it. She leaned back against the cushions and stared at the ceiling as she tapped the phone against her knee. Thoughts rushed across her face without being given voice. Jem knew her well enough to understand the type of things she was thinking even if he didn’t know what the content of those thoughts was.

“If she’s gone to ground, someone else took her there,” Tessa finally said.

“Where are the other warlocks? Did she go with them?” Jem asked.

Tessa rattled off a list of names and locations. The four who had come back to the Institute as well as six others she had found in her efforts to find Natasha. He hadn’t realized that she had been putting that much time into it. Aside from Natasha and the mysterious Dmitri, Tessa had found all but two of the warlocks who had been in the church. Jem didn’t ask if she had passed that information on to Maryse. He suspected that she hadn’t. Magnus maybe, but not the Clave and Tessa would always see Maryse as the Clave.

Tessa sat up and looked Jem in the eye. Her nervous energy drained out of her. Her emotions were like thunder clouds building slow then clearing to blue like summer storms. Flashes of anger or anxiety rattled through her and then blew away to leave her calm and collected again. Jem often felt like he had to recover from his own emotions whereas Tessa just let her feelings go. He never knew when the storm would break or what would cause it but it always happened.

“I can’t remember anymore what I did without you for so very many years,” she said to him. He startled at the change in topic and was momentarily speechless. She smiled and kissed him carefully, “You’re supposed to be meeting Will and I need to go talk to someone down in the Bronx with connections in Milan. Bring me home something for dinner.”

He nodded and they were held still for a moment. Her eyes were bluer than usual. Then she leaned in and kissed him again before leaving him alone in the apartment to wonder at the strangeness of the woman he’d fallen in love with and where she was going.

* * *

If Tessa’s emotions were summer storms that built slowly and blew themselves out fast, Will’s were a hurricane. Will’s emotions fed on themselves and spun and spun and spun until he’d gone from worried to a surly wreck. He hid it well but Jem could see it even better now than he’d been able to when they’d been young.

After making the mistake of cooping himself up with Will’s hurricane of anger and disorientation in the training room for over an hour, Jem pulled him outside. They found a balcony that looked over the courtyard and the city beyond. Will sat on the railing and glared at New York. Jem leaned on the pitted wrought iron beside him and ignored the waves of misery beneath the confrontational body language.

Jem didn’t talk. With Tess he had been silent because he didn’t know how to fix her problem but with Will he was silent because he knew that Will would break the silence when he was ready and wouldn’t talk until he was. Will tugged at the sleeves of his gear because it was borrowed and the fit was different than he was used to. Usually it wouldn’t have bothered him but today he seemed intent on being bothered by everything.

Jem had found him to be more like his cursed self than he had been in his entire life after it had been broken. Defensive and short with everyone. He wasn’t nasty as he had been once but he was unpleasant. Jem knew how to weather that Will better than anyone else and he was surprised to find it almost endearing, aggravating but endearing. Not unlike like a puppy. Will was a puppy growling and pretending to be much meaner than he truly was.

“What happens if I don’t go home?” Will asked. “What happens if I do go home and know things about the future that I shouldn’t know. What happens to Now if I change things Then?”

“I don’t know,” Jem said.

“Shouldn’t I be rewriting history? I’m gone from Then,” he said then as though it were a place name, “I must be able to go back or Jace shouldn’t exist. He’s related to me. At some point that means I must have progeny, there aren’t any other Herondales. I’m the last one. Unless the name got picked up by an ascendant sometime after I died.”

“You and Jace are related,” Jem said keeping his voice level and not looking over at Will. He didn’t have answers to questions about how history fit together and whether or not time travel could destroy the way the pieces fit.

Jem’s phone buzzed and he pulled it out of his pocket to read the message that said Tessa was going to be a little later than she’d expected. Will dropped off the rail and came to lean over his shoulder and look at the screen. He never touched the little device but he watched Jem each time he used it.

Jem had started it but Will kept up the casual and frequent little touches when they were alone. Jem thought Will might be doing it as an attempt to acclimate to what he assumed to be a modern custom. Sometimes he just seemed to be seeking contact with another person as though to assuage his own loneliness.

Whichever it was, Jem never turned away the shoulder against his or the arm dropped around his neck while they talked. Will leaned against the rail beside him as much as he leaned against him. Will watched him type out the response on the tiny little screen. When Will smirked at his inability to not hit too many letters at once - something he was sure he would never master - Jem pushed his hip out to the side and knocked Will off balance.

Rather than growling or retaliating, Will simply laughed and resettled himself into place against Jem’s side. Jem had found the eye of the hurricane that was Will’s mood, not a true break in his temper but still a respite.

“Aren’t musicians supposed to have graceful fingers? There is no F in that word,” Will said and Jem silently handed him the phone and gave him a wave to say ‘go ahead and try.’ Will promptly hit the wrong part of the perfectly smooth screen and brought up another screen that he frowned at.

“What did I do?” he asked.

“Opened the phone book,” Jem said.

“How do I close the phone book? Why is it called a book and not a list?” Will said.

“Because before we had tiny phones they had big ones that didn’t store the numbers so they were printed in a book,” Jem said and he reached over and put the screen back to the half finished message to Tessa, “Here.”

“And who invented this distribution of letters? Wouldn’t it be easier to find them if it were alphabetical?” Will held the phone in one hand and used his index finger on the other to tap each letter as he found it. He didn’t miss as often as Jem did but he was comically slow.

“Keyboards are always laid out like that,” Jem said with a shrug. “Mundanes invent these things not me. It makes sense to someone somewhere. What did you just send her?”

Will flashed him a grin and Jem lunged for the phone. He had been paying more attention to Will’s hunt for the letters than what he had been writing. Will spun out of the way and a brief struggle of keep away ensued before Jem finally wrenched the phone back.

“What does that even mean?” he said pulling up the message which started with his message about picking up takeaway sushi and ended with a fragment of what he assumed was poetry but didn’t mean anything to him. When they spoke in books, they spoke a language he didn’t understand even if he read all the same novels, he still wouldn’t be a part of it.

“She’ll understand it. How long until she reads it?” Will asked. Jem had pushed him over and he was sitting on the ground and looking up as he spoke. Both childlike and not. Jem dropped himself to the ground beside him and they leaned against the curling iron design of the balcony behind them and each other.

“She’ll receive it almost immediately. She’ll read it when she reads it. Sometimes it’s immediate, other times she won’t open the phone for days and will never read it,” Jem said closing the messages. On the backdrop of the phone was a picture of Tessa making a face. Her nose was scrunched up and the very edge of smile was pulling on her lips. He loved the picture and the memory that went with it. It was impossible to tell by looking at it that she hadn’t been dressed when it had been taken but something about knowing that always made it feel like the picture was a secret.

“I love photographs,” Will said still looking at the screen. His voice was far softer than Jem was expecting. He wasn’t really talking about photographs and they both knew it. Before Will could retreat from the topic into the polite avoidance he often used when Tessa came up in a conversation, Jem leaned in a little closer. He held the phone where Will could see it and started paging through photos.

He could barely type on the machine and most of the more advanced functions were just about as comprehensible to him as arcane warlock magic but he knew how to use the camera. The indulgent store clerk had helped him find on that used buttons for photography instead of touch functions. He had hundreds of photos many of them of the exact same subject though the scenery changed.

Will didn’t ask questions but Jem could see the expressions on his face change as the images scrolled by. Will’s guard was down and the little changes were quick and as easy to read as a book. Jem couldn’t remember ever having seen Will like that in more than brief flashes. Even Will after the curse had broken had never been as at ease with Brother Zachariah as he was now.

The entire series of photos where Tessa made faces at Anna and Anna tried to match them actually made Will laugh out loud. He blinked in surprise at a picture of Tessa in a bathing suit and an over-sized hat on a beach in the Bahamas. Another one from the same day where she stood soaking wet and captured in mid sentence after being dumped in the water actually made Will colour.

One of Jem’s favourite photos was of Tessa with a cup of coffee curled in her hands while she looked away from the camera at something that had distracted her. She had a half smile on her face and was just starting to say something. Her hair fell in a wave around her and sunlight picked out gold highlights in the dark strands. The light had been just right and it perfectly captured the way he always imagined her to be when she wasn’t there. Beautiful, more fully awake than most people, engaged with the world and deep in her own thoughts all at once.

“It’s a beautiful piece of jewelry, did you buy it for her when you got married?” Will asked.

Jem looked back at the picture trying to pick out the jewelry Will had mentioned. He almost asked what he was talking about because the only piece of jewelry that was visible in the photo was her bracelet. The gold and the pearls and the shape of the marriage rune were all picked out in the same light that made her hair shine.

“It’s nice that she can wear the runes. That’s all I meant,” Will said as he walls went back up. He thought he had given some sort of offense when Jem didn’t answer. Jem couldn’t think of how to respond. He would not take credit for the bracelet. It was too much a piece of them for him to say

“Sometimes I forget how little you know,” Jem said. They were both still looking at Tessa’s half smile in the photo.

“I’d know more if you told me,” Will said.

“What do you want to know?” Jem asked.

“Nothing,” Will said looking sad and then defiant. Jem could almost feel the change in the air as they passed back into the storm of Will’s emotions.

“I will answer any question you ask, I swear that to you but unless you ask, I won’t tell you anything. Not about her, not about me, not about you or your family or Clave history,” Jem said.

“Should I say thank you?” Will asked.

“Either that or tell me to start at the beginning and I’ll tell you everything I remember about the last 140 years from that time Benedict Lightwood turned into a giant worm up until the morning that Tessa’s phone rang and we left for Venice,” Jem said.

“Benedict Lightwood turned into a worm,” Will mused.

“You have made the Lightworm joke more times than any of us can stomach any more. Please don’t do it again,” Jem laughed. Will joined him and then settled in against him again as he tried to think up better puns. He spoke with his hands as he got more animated and Jem was pulled into it against his will. The game went on to include other Shadowhunter names that could be reassembled and which family member was most likely to be offended by them. Will didn’t even seem to care that Jem picked a mid century Whitelaw as the most likely to faint in horror at being called Whiteballs.

“Heronfail?” Jem suggested and then shook his head, “No, I can do better than that.”

“Stop trying right there, my family name is venerable and not to be trifled with. You can shut it,” Will said.

“Look who’s learning modern phrases, you’re so cute,” Jem said and Will shot back a play on his name that was made up entirely of swearwords before they collapsed into laughter again.

“Thank you for tolerating me. Today, yesterday, tomorrow, our entire childhoods. You have saved my life a hundred times. Even when you don’t know what you are doing,” Will said and then he reached over and hooked a hand around Jem’s neck to pull him in and kiss his forehead.

When Jem had kissed Will on the forehead before he’d done it without thinking. If he was being honest with himself, he did it because it was what he would have done for Tessa if she’d been upset like that. He kept having difficulty separating how he loved Tessa from what were acceptable ways to demonstrate the way he loved Will. They were friends not lovers and what was acceptable in one arena was not in another.

That thought crossed his mind and stopped him from the utterly unacceptable thing he had been about to do. It would not have been acceptable to raise his face and meet the pressure of Will’s lips with a real kiss. It simply could not be done. Jem was momentarily caught in Will’s gaze and then Will kissed his forehead again and then grinned and pulled a still unbalanced Jem to his feet.

“You’re meant to be buying a pretty girl dinner and I am meant to be attending a lesson with a teacher who is so deeply intimidated by me that she very nearly refuses to speak. Your little history book lesson made a bit of an impression. I don’t know whether to thank you or curse you,” Will said.

Jem’s feeling of disorientation didn’t entirely go away as he said his good byes and left the Institute. He purchased too much Chinese takeaway and made his way home. The city was quiet as he drove back and tried to think of all the reasons that Chinese takeaway should really be called something else as it had very little resemblance to food that people in China ate beyond a few matching ingredients.

* * *

 “Do you ever have mad thoughts?” Jem asked Tessa as they passed containers back and forth without dishing anything onto plates. The other thought kept climbing back to the surface. How close had he actually been to crossing that line? How angry would Will have been after he’d gotten over the shock of it?

“Like what?” she asked. She rarely gestured with a fork in her hand, her Victorian breeding wouldn’t allow using cutlery for expressing thoughts but chopsticks didn’t fall under that rule. She would wave them about and point at things with them. She had them raised in an inquisitive gesture.

She had been telling him about her visit with a faerie who had friends in Milan. The visit hadn’t been fruitless but it hadn’t given her the information she was looking for. One of the still unaccounted for warlocks was in Milan but it wasn’t Natasha. Certain fashion houses very discretely employed magic users to make sure that their runway shows caught all the attention they were supposed to catch.

“I can’t quite sort it out,” he admitted. “I had this thought earlier today. It crossed my mind like a temporary madness but it won’t leave now.”

“So not temporary,” she said. “Will you share this not-so-temporary madness?”

“I thought about doing a thing that is unacceptable,” he said.

“He said vaguely,” Tessa retorted and looked up in the midst of pointing a spring roll at him to actually see his expression. Whatever smart ass comment had been about to come out of her mouth was replaced with a look of concern as she said, “Who decides what is acceptable? There is always someone to tell you not to do something. How many people have said that your decision to leave behind the Silent Brothers was an unacceptable dereliction of your vows? How many others have called my very existence an unacceptable travesty?”

Jem frowned at her but it didn’t slow her down, “If it upsets you, don’t do it. If it upsets you because someone else says it is unacceptable, well, you’re 152, you can figure out what is right and what is wrong all by yourself.”

Jem pulled her in, gesturing spring roll and all, to kiss her forehead. He wanted to tell her why it made him smile, why it meant something different now than it would have before but he couldn’t assemble the words the way he wanted to. He kissed her again and then dropped back into his chair and reached out for the fried rice. Tessa waved a finger at it and it slid across the table on its own so he could grab it.

She was calm and collected and all smiles. The storm of anxiety would come back eventually, the longer they couldn’t find Natasha, the longer they couldn’t understand what had happened with the portal, the worse it would get. Now though, he had a summer evening, calm and safe with just the hint of rain in the air. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extended metaphors are fun! Or pretentious. I don't really know!
> 
> Jem telling her he was bringing sushi and then forgetting and getting Chinese was originally a continuity error but I left it in because I think it works with him thinking about everything else and now what he is actually doing.


	14. Worse

A week into his house arrest Will was starting to lose his mind. He wanted out of the Institute. He’d taken to snapping at people when they came to talk to him and they’d started giving him a wider berth. The possibility of forming friendships faded each time he scowled in response to an idiom he didn’t understand or a hastily retracted invitation he couldn’t accept.

“The smart ass temper is a family trait,” Alec said to him, “Here I thought it was unique to you, Jace.”

“It is unique to me, I am much wittier,” Jace retorted.

They’d been standing in the training room because training for hours was one of the few things that could exhaust Will enough that he could sleep through his nerves. Was time moving forward at home? Had they noticed he was gone? Could his absence change the future? Was he going to be able to go home? Was he going to be able to face Jem when he got there? How did you look your dying best friend in the eye and tell them that you knew what would happen to them?

“Modesty is another family trait,” Will said with a little less growl in his voice. He liked Jace. He found him slightly insufferable but he still liked him. Alec was more of a curiosity because of his relationship with Magnus. Will didn’t quite know what to make of someone who seemed reserved and normal and yet managed to make a person like Magnus into someone’s father. Will waved a hand in the air, “As is gambling and drinking too much. We’re an interesting family.”

“Gambling?” Jace said. “Are you a gambler?”

“No, but my father managed to gamble away the family home in Wales. I don’t know about the ones after me, you’d have to ask Tess. She seems to know,” Will said.

He had not asked. Jem had told him that anything he asked they would answer and he was terrified to know so he hadn’t asked a single question about his family.

“I didn’t even know that she knew the Herondales before you showed up,” Jace said. “I guess I could have figured it out. I knew that Zach had had a Herondale for a parabatai and I knew that she had known him since they were young. She doesn’t talk about herself much.”

“Magnus knows your family too. He’s told me a little bit about you and about your son,” Alec said, “Magnus knew him too. Magnus doesn’t talk a lot about himself either, I think it is a warlock thing but I know some of the stories. He respects you. He doesn’t talk about many of the old-time Shadowhunters with respect but you’re an exception. You and Henry Branwell.”

“Most people don’t respect Henry,” Will said hoping that it was a clear enough signal to stop the conversation so he wouldn’t have to find out what Alec knew about his son. The son he had with some woman he probably hadn’t met yet and he was quite certain he couldn’t love as much as he wanted to love the person he married.

He wanted love like his parents had.

No, it was much more specific than that. He wanted Tessa to turn that smile she only ever gave Jem on him and love him as much as he loved her. But it hadn’t been Tessa. Tessa had spent her life waiting for Jem. Tessa was a warlock and couldn’t have children. The son in the story Magnus had told couldn’t possibly be theirs. It as an impossible fantasy either way.

“If someone could tell me my future, I think I’d want to know,” Jace said.

“Hell, I wouldn’t,” Alec said.

“I think I would. My future will be thrilling and exciting and full of fantastic deeds,” Jace said.

“Whereas my future features a marriage of convenience and never getting to truly see my best friend again,” Will said but he said it in Welsh. It turned out to be an excellent distraction that led to Will teaching the others how to swear in Welsh while they threw knives and Will attempted to avoid any conversations about himself.

 

* * *

 

The day after the impromptu language lesson, Will was wandering the corridors with a book Tessa had given him in hand. He walked and he read. There were many closed doors and he itched to open them all but he was trying his best not to pry so he read while he walked so he wouldn’t be quite so tempted.

The book she’d given him was the most ridiculous thing he had ever read and yet he hadn’t been able to put it down. It made absolutely no sense. It was titled Slaughterhouse Five and even that didn’t particularly make sense. Reading a history of the city of Dresden and the Second World War that he’d lifted from the library didn’t help it make sense. And yet he was on his third read through and he’d started writing things in the margins of the book and hoping that Tessa wouldn’t kill him for defacing her volume.

He hadn’t told anyone he’d taken the history book. Mundane history had been hard to find in the library but he’d managed to find the small selection of books. The arrivals, in one of the few instances they’d been allowed to be in the same room, were told that they were not going to be given any access to the modern world beyond what was unavoidable. It would make reintegrating when they returned home more seamless. Will had gone looking nearly as soon as the meeting was over.

He read and he walked and he tried to make sense of alien worlds and time travel and wars that were simultaneously far in the past and far in the future.

He heard the voices and stopped.

Voices were not unusual. It was an Institute after all and it was full of people but one of the voices was Tessa’s. He was sure of that before he could hear the words. Her accent was different but her voice was the same. Her American accent had been softened by years in England and other places but she still sounded like herself.

“Why does it matter if I take him or not?” Tessa asked and she didn’t sound happy. Will tucked his finger into his place in the book and leaned against the partially opened door to listen. It was eavesdropping but it was Tessa and she was talking to Maryse as though she thought the Shadowhunter was an idiot. Will had started to see Maryse as the reason he couldn’t leave and though he knew, rationally, that it wasn’t fair he couldn’t shake it. The idea of Tessa telling her off in her Warlock Queen voice was too enticing to ignore.

“He is a Shadowhunter and will be important to our history. The Clave doesn’t want them to bring too much information back to the past when we return them,” Maryse said.

“I trust him and he can handle himself. He’s smarter than most people and he won’t cause a scene the first time a bus goes by him,” Tessa said and Will checked that there was no one around to see him before he smiled at that.

“I know the Carstairs and the Herondales have a history but that doesn’t give either you or your husband carte blanche to come in here and just sign him out like he’s a library book. I will have to talk to Zachariah if he continues interrupting William’s schedule here. We are trying to maintain normalcy,” Maryse said and she said it as though she were reading from a text book. This was the company line, the thing the Clave had told her to say.

“The Carstairs and the Herondales do have a history,” Tessa said and there was a greater force in her voice than had been there before. “Their history begins with those two. Jem hasn’t been showing up here to upset your careful routines because he feels some responsibility to the Herondale family name. He’s here because he and Will were parabatai. Those two are where that old connection between the families began. I’m trying to care that it might upset history but I just don’t. Maybe history needs upsetting. You cannot ask Jem not to talk to Will. That’s absurd. If it were Alec and Jace would you expect them to obey those rules?”

“That can be evaluated,” Maryse said, “But you cannot take William out of this building. These rules don’t come from me.”

“I can track spells but only if the spell is actually there. We need to figure out exactly which spell keeps latching onto them when they step out of the warding and Magnus’s little tests on the werewolves in your back alley aren’t helping. I need someone I can take halfway across town. I need them far away from your warding and I need to be able to trust them to handle themselves in a strange environment,” Tessa said. Her voice was strong and final when she said, “Will is the best choice.”

“Fine, don’t take the werewolf. Take Alison. She is from the 70s, it will be less of a shock for her,” Maryse said.

“She also hates warlocks and will resist every bit of magic I attempt. She’s been an ass to Magnus and Catarina all week. We will get no where and then I will throw her into the Hudson in a fit of annoyance,” Tessa said.

“She can -” Maryse started but Tessa cut her off.

“Let me explain, I’m not so much asking permission as explaining my rationale,” Tessa said.

“This is a Clave problem, not a warlock one,” Maryse said.

“Then you can solve it yourself,” Tessa said, “But wait, there are no Shadowhunters who can track spells, there are no Shadowhunters who can act as seers and see the magic as it is cast, there are no Shadowhunters who can follow Dmitri down into the Warlock markets. You need us.”

There was a long silent moment. Will leaned against the wall and grinned to himself. Tessa Gray had first impressed him when she’d swung a jug at his head. She had never stopped impressing him. He didn’t lean in to see her staring Maryse down but he pictured it and smiled a little wider.

“I’ll bring him back before dark,” Tessa said in response to something Will didn’t see happen.

“Will you accept an armed escort?” Maryse asked.

“Yes,” Tessa said, “I’d rather people I know.”

“Simon and Isabel should be available,” Maryse said.

“That’s acceptable,” Tessa said.

Will didn’t have time to go anywhere so he crossed his arms and leaned against the wall beside the door. Tessa stalked out looking fierce and beautiful and all the carefully constructed things he was going to say to her fell apart. He hadn’t been alone with her in so very long. He hadn’t touched her since the day he’d come to this place with Magnus. He regretted that choice no matter how many times he reminded himself that it was safer this way, safer for them. He was too selfish not to regret it.

His very stupid arms uncrossed themselves and he had to stop himself before that turned into actually reaching for her. The anger and the harshness in Tessa’s face had vanished. It was just gone when she saw him. She froze and he let his hands drop down. He’d forgotten he was holding the book and almost dropped it. Tessa turned and closed Maryse’s office door.

“Are we going on a trip?” he asked in a conspiratorial whisper.

“Jem made it sound like you were about to start breaking down the walls if someone didn’t get you out of here,” she said after she had led him halfway down the hall where they couldn’t be overheard. “Do you often skulk the halls and eavesdrop?”

“No, only on you. You’re a unique case,” Will said and then bit his tongue because that was not something he should have said to her. She laughed and he grinned at her as she leaned in against his shoulder in the same little bump that Jem did.

“Wait,” Will said pausing and then hurrying to catch up to her, “Jem said that I want to leave? Is that why you are here? Did you lie to her?”

“There are genuine magical reasons to take you out of here and attempt to track the spell,” Tessa said.

“But,” he prompted falling into step beside her.

“I lied a little bit. I probably won’t be able to learn anything useful at all,” Tessa said. “But the Strand is one of the largest bookstores in the city and Jem wanted to go for sushi and you’ll probably hate sushi but you should try it. I want to take you on the subway. I want to show you central park. I want a day Will. If they can do this, if they can send you back,” she stopped dead in the hall. Will almost left her behind and when he turned back she was more serious than he expected.

She continued, “If they can do that then I want a day to just be together before you’re gone. But if you think you are a threat to the future or the past or whatever it is the Clave theorists think you are, you are welcome to stay here.”

“I will always choose to be where you are,” Will said and bit his tongue again. She looked at him. Her eyes were misty mornings when everything smelled fresh and sharp and new. He tried to back track and make that statement more appropriate but he couldn’t think straight enough with her eyes on him to form his thoughts into words.

She stepped in closer to him and her eyes were sad. He’d been bracing himself for anger. He’d been bracing himself for her to tell him that she wasn’t his to be with. Instead, she very slowly wrapped her arms around him and pulled him in close. He collapsed around her so she was pulled in as tightly as he could manage. He stopped himself before he pressed his face into her neck because he didn’t think he’d be able to resist kissing her if he was that close to her skin.

Neither of them broke away first. Tessa settled herself lower so her arms were looped around his waist and her head was on his chest at just the right height to rest his chin on her hair. No one spoke and in the silent empty hall the only sounds were their breathing and their heartbeats. Will could almost hear them echo off the stone.

The silence was interrupted by footsteps and Will started to pull away. Tessa grabbed his sleeve and pulled him into the nearest doorway. They found themselves in a disused office in great need of dusting. The furniture had been covered in white sheets but the empty bookshelves were heavy with dust. No one had been in here in a very long time.

Tessa was still too close and he wrapped his arm around her again. She was watching by the door but she let it fall closed when he touched her. She wasn’t nearly so close this time and he could feel the warmth of her hands where she’d rested them on his chest. The clothing in this century was so thin and people wore so few layers. Will hadn’t decided whether or not he liked it.

Tessa wore the tight trousers that were so popular and those he did like. They were nearly indecent and he felt a little guilty for watching her when she wore them but he did like them. Her shirt was just a single layer of cotton over her skin and his hands had found their way to her waist while he was busy thinking that he shouldn’t.

She touched his face and he leaned towards her. It was gravity. It couldn’t be argued with. The night on the balcony at the Lightwood party came back to him and he remembered tracing her features like this. This time it was her fingers against his skin. She had been drunk that night and she’d regretted it almost immediately. They weren’t drunk this time. He searched her face as she trailed fingers over his jaw and his nose and the arch of his cheeks.

“Will?” she said in a voice that was too soft to possibly belong to the same person who had just argued down the Head of the Institute.

“Tess,” he matched her tone as closely as he could.

“I don’t want you to leave. You have to go back. Your life is there. Everything is there. It is unconscionable to want to hold onto you here. I thought avoiding you would make it easier but it hasn’t,” she said.

Will looked over her head at the dusty room. At the shapeless blobs of furniture and the little cluster of objects still sitting on one shelf. He tried to make out what they were while he assembled what he wanted to say.

“There are only three things that have ever made me happy,” Will said as softly as he could. It was a secret that he wasn’t sure he could tell it to her but the words were already coming and he couldn’t stop them, “My family, Jem and you.”

Her fingers went from flat on his chest to twisted in his shirt and he didn’t stop talking, “And I will be going back to a life where I will have nothing.”

“That’s not true,” Tessa said.

“Isn’t it?” Will said. “The Clave will never allow me to contact my parents. Jem will become a Silent Brother and as much as I would rather he be that than dead, he will still be gone. He will go to the Silent City and I will never have another day with him. I could not leave the Clave. I could not follow Cecily back to Wales or York because then I would truly never see him again. And you. I will spend my entire life loving you and you will spend your entire life loving him.”

“Will,” she started.

“It’s not something to apologize for Tessa. I am glad that you love him. I am glad that he loves you and I don’t have strong enough words to tell you how glad I am that you found each other after so much time. I am sorry to be the one to throw your offers of friendship back in your face. I don’t mean to. I swear I didn’t mean for it to be like that,” he said.

“Will,” she said with a little more force and he stopped talking and looked at her. Her eyes shimmered with tears threatening to fall and she was closer than she had been a moment ago. He had made her cry again. He needed to stop speaking.

“William,” she said and she paused as though unsure what to say next. He didn’t speak. He would just say something worse if he spoke now. He closed his eyes.

“I love you,” she said. His body reacted to the words before his mind caught up to them. His fingers tightened on her waist and he pulled her just a little bit closer.

“I loved you when I sent you away that day in the drawing room. It was so long ago Will. So long ago but I remember it. I remember the words you said and the look in your eyes. I think I loved you from that night in the Dark House. In all the universe I had no one and then suddenly I had you. You were the answer to a prayer I hadn’t been brave enough to say aloud,” she said.

He said her name again and she caught his face so when he opened his eyes hers were right there, “You’re right. I have spent my life loving Jem. He is kinder and better than most people will ever be. I loved him when he was a dying boy. I loved him when he was half statue, half ghost of himself. I love him now. I will love him long after he has gone on to whatever comes after this life.”

“But I’ve loved you as long,” Tessa told him and he gathered her in against his chest. “I loved you when you were cursed and miserable with those tiny flashes when the goodness in you couldn’t be suppressed any further. I loved you as a young man mourning his best friend and fighting for his place in the Clave. I loved you as a father with your children climbing into your lap and demanding stories. I loved you as a old man who never stopped doing good in this world. I loved you the day you died and every day since. I love you now, lost and confused and so far from who you were meant to be. I love you, Will.”

He still couldn’t trust his voice but it wasn’t for the same reasons. She was truly crying now and he brushed the tears away from her cheeks. Her skin was soft. His heart hurt just to look at her. She loved him and she still wasn’t his. It was almost worse.

She wasn’t his and he couldn’t find the strength to pull away from her. It wasn’t possible, not after she had said that. Had she ever told him before? Had they sat in the same room with his wife and children both of them pretending not to know? He tried to imagine that life and it made the ache worse.

She was the one who tilted his face down but she waited for him to respond to her. He couldn’t stop himself from leaning in or from bringing his hand up to cup her face. She smiled and he felt it rather than saw it before she pressed her lips to his. A little part of his mind was still sane enough to tell him not to do it but by the time it got the message through, he could already taste her. He kissed her one more time before taking her by the shoulders and pulling away.

“Jem,” he said. Tessa looked at him like she was dizzy and he was speaking in a foreign language. He almost lost the nerve it was taking him to step back. She was so beautiful and he loved her so much and he couldn’t imagine doing anything intentional that would make her this sad.

“I can’t,” Will said, “You can’t.”

“I know,” Tessa said then she gave him a small smile before her face went serious and she said it again, “I know.” Her fingers brushed his hand as they both backed up a little bit and she said, “I’m so sorry. I never wanted to put you in this position.”

A phone rang.

Tessa jumped and Will reached out to put a hand on her arm just to steady her but pulled back as soon as he made contact with her skin. She was looking at him when she answered it. Jem had explained the basics of the little machine during one of their training sessions when they sat tucked together in the back corner of the training room. It had been late and dark and the blue of the screen had lit Jem’s skin an unnatural colour. Jem’s shoulder had been against his and more than once he’d leaned in close enough that his hair touched Will’s cheek. Will had listened but he still had no idea how to use the phone but at least he now understood what it did.

Tessa’s eyes never left him as she had a hurried conversation with Simon in which she convinced him to leave them alone unless they called. She had just been kissing him but she still used that easy “us” when she talked of herself and Jem. Will was suddenly caught by the fear that he had somehow ruined it.

“Jem was going to meet us out front in the car,” Tessa said and the past tense didn’t escape him.

“All I wanted to hear from you for so long was that you felt even a fraction of what I felt for you. I cannot unhear those words. I can’t go sit with him with the taste of you still on my lips,” Will said and if he hadn’t trained himself out of blushing when he was a child he would have turned scarlet to have said that out loud.

“No, you can’t go sit with him with a weight of secrets between you,” she said, “I’ll tell him whether you do or not. We very nearly killed ourselves trying to keep all the secrets to protect one another when we were young. All the things you didn’t tell one another were terrible. The secrets about his health and your curse and me. That is over. I will not go back to it.”

Then, before Will could decide how to respond to that, she turned and walked away, leaving him to hurry after her or run away. He strongly considered running. He considered removing himself as far from the situation as he could, locking himself in the room they had assigned him and not coming out until he was sent back to the point in time before he managed to endanger anyone’s marriage.

He didn’t run. His heart was rattling around inside his chest and his stomach was churning but he didn’t run. He followed Tessa.


	15. Don't You Dare

Tessa left them alone and went home. She had shut down Jem’s suggestions of anything else. They could talk without her there. Jem had the car and had been looking forward to taking Will out driving. He’d been resistant when she’d drawn spells on the vehicle that would function as warding. He cared little for most technology but he loved that car. They’d warded the car the night before and he’d asked questions about whether magic would interrupt the machinery or leave permanent marks anywhere.

She had laughed at the time thinking that she would be there if anything were to go wrong with it. She couldn’t be there. She couldn’t close herself up in a small space with Will’s suppressed anxiety and Jem when he was doing that Silent Brother calm thing that he had been doing on the sidewalk. She talked herself into trusting her own magic and trusting that the two of them could take care of each other if it came to it.

Will couldn’t talk to her and would probably never trust her in any way again and she needed the space. She needed to be alone. She needed to think and grieve. That person might be Will but he was not hers and she missed her Will with a ferocity that she hadn’t felt in years. Her loss had grown old. It was a scar not a wound. Not anymore. When she was standing on that sidewalk, telling Jem that neither of them were ok, it wasn’t old anymore. It was new and fresh and he was gone. He had come back and yet he was still gone.

The pain of that loss was sharp.

She wanted to turn back and throw her arms around him again because he was Will but she knew that he wasn’t the person she wanted. He wasn’t the one who knew her better than anyone. Will was a part of her and this boy wasn’t. He didn’t know her secrets and her worst days. He hadn’t been there through failures and triumphs. The good and the bad. He didn’t know that the people she loved most were the same people he loved.

Will was right there but the person she wanted was irretrievable.

In the silent apartment, she wrapped herself in one of Jem’s sweaters and a pair of flannel pajamas. Then she very slowly made a cup of tea and watched the leaves float in the water and the colour deepen. Once the tea was poured and she had brushed out her hair, she was calm enough to breathe normally.

The old rituals helped. They had been true rituals, almost a religion at one point in her life. Hair, tea, and sorting. She sorted books or papers or the kitchen cabinets. It didn’t really matter what, what mattered was alphabetizing or building genre lists or finding every expired can of vegetables and throwing it away. Ritual. She did it until she was calm. She controlled things she could control until she was able to let go of the things that she couldn’t control.

This time she didn’t sort books or food or Jem’s music. She would never sort Jem’s music on him again. He still gave her funny looks when he saw her with a piece of it in hand even when she was just putting it back on the stand. His madcap piles were apparently not madcap. There was a system that had nothing to do with composers or eras or any other sane method she could understand. She had sworn she wouldn’t touch them again.

On the bookshelf in the main room was a long low wooden box with a heron carved on the lid. It had been a Christmas gift from her daughter in 1945. It was exactly the right size to hold letters in envelopes. She took it down off the book shelf and ran her fingers over the wood. There was no dust. Magic kept things better dusted than a maid might but even if it weren’t for the magic this would be clean.

Will had written her more than a hundred letters over the later years of his life. He hadn’t told her about it while he was doing it. He had told her of their existence in the same breath that he apologized fro them. He told her where to find them and how sorry he was to have written them. He didn’t tell her that he had written even more to Jem. She found that out a long time later.

“You should burn them Tessa, I had thought,” he had stopped talking, his voice failing for just a moment before he continued, “It doesn’t matter because it was hubris. Burn them if you need to. You shouldn’t live in the past and they’ll never be anything but the past. I shouldn’t have forced them on you. You deserve everything the future will bring. Promise that you will always look forward.”

She had promised and she had tried to live up to that promise.

She had also kept every one.

They were the past but the past was a piece of her and a piece of the present as well. There were opened ones tucked back into their envelopes and filed near the back and the unopened ones at the front. It was these that she picked out and started to sort. She read them rarely. She saved them like a miser with pennies and even still the unopened section was smaller than the ones she had left to read for the first time.

Each one had an inscription. Always her name but sometimes not only her name. Over the years she had found the patterns. The doodled envelopes were always silly notes. The ones that repeated her name Tess, Tess, Tessa, on the front were love letters. The ones that simply said, Tessa could be anything. There were even ones that were simply literary criticism or little journal entries detailing his day. They were shards of the life she’d lost saved on pieces of cream coloured stationery.

She sorted through the ones she hadn’t yet read. The paper was heavy and old and charmed to protect it from growing brittle. The handwriting changed just slightly. Once she had her piles sorted by salutation, she picked up the pile of love letters and resorted by handwriting. She looked for the weakest. She wanted something written by Will late in his life, as far from the boy Jem was driving around in an expensive car as he would ever be.

She picked one and turned it in her hands.

Tess, Tess, Tessa.

That was all it said on the front. The same salutation he’d used in the first letter he had written her, the one she still had memorized. The handwriting, in dark blue ink, wavered just a little on the long strokes of the Ts. The visual memory that came with running her fingers over the ink was vibrant and forced her to close her eyes and pull herself tighter into Jem’s sweater until it passed.

Her memories of him - like her grief - were old. They were stretched and tattered from being taken out too many times but Will was here and the colour of his eyes was as recent to her as the colour of her own. The memory didn’t feel old. It brought her back to the cabin in Wales where he pushed snow white hair off his forehead and held up papers to read new chapters of his most recent history aloud to her so she could pick out his errors before he mailed them off to his editors.

That was the Will who had written this. Will who had to meter how long he wrote so that his joints didn’t bother him. It had never stopped him but it had slowed him down. In this memory her mind called up his fingers were ink stained and pale and his skin crinkled into wrinkles around his knuckles.

“Remember when my hands were graceful?” he’d said waving his fingers at her.

“Yes, you’re an ugly old goat now. I should divorce you. I only ever liked you because you were pretty,” she’d said barely looking up from her book.

“I hate you,” he had said.

“I hate you too,” she had grinned at him and finally looked up from whatever she was reading to see those eyes staring out of a face so utterly familiar she imagined she could recognize it in the pitch blank. Growing old had never made him less perfectly handsome. Different but never less. He had laughed and thrown a crumpled up piece of a draft at her. His aim had been good. He had hit her in the head with the ball of paper. As he read her the most recent paragraphs she had rerolled the ball thrown it back. He’d caught it without breaking what he was reading.

“It needs more sword fights. I’m becoming a stodgy old man,” he said grimacing at the page when he had finished. He gestured with the ball of garbage while he spoke.

“They edit the sword fights out, they’ve done in to your last three drafts. It’s a history not a penny dreadful,” Tessa had told him.

Tessa smiled at the letter in her hands and savoured the reality of the memory. She had forgotten that it had ever happened until her mind dredged it up for her. The way his voice sounded and the way that room smelled when it was being heated by the wood stove. It was a little like being there.

She opened the letter and began to read.

 

Jem shook her awake very gently with his hand on her shoulder. He brushed the remains of tears off her cheeks with the pads of his fingers and helped her gather up the letters. They were still spread in stacks around her. She had only opened one new one but then she had reread everything else that was already open. Jem refolded the open ones and put them back where they belonged. He didn’t say a word.

He settled down beside her on the sofa and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. She leaned in. There were no more tears, she’d run out. He stroked her hair and smoothed it back.

“How is he?” she asked.

“Confused,” Jem said.

“Will he ever speak to me again?” she asked and her voice was a near whisper. She had been wrong, there were still tears. She bit them back and held onto Jem a little tighter.

“Why wouldn’t he speak to you?” Jem asked.

“I betrayed you,” she said.

“You did not,” he said.

“In his mind, I did, utterly,” Tessa said, “I did and Will is far more likely to forgive me for breaking his heart than he is to forgive me for breaking yours.”

“Don’t talk to me about everyone else’s broken heart while you are the one crying yourself to sleep in the middle of the afternoon,” Jem said. His fingers found her face and tilted it upwards.

She stared at him until she started to understand his expression. Pain and resolve and over it all that unshakable Brother Zachariah calm that had nothing to do with the real Jem. He was preparing to say something and she didn’t want to hear it. Panic flared in the pit of Tessa’s stomach.

“Tessa,” he started.

“Don’t you dare,” she said and her voice was almost too thick with emotion to choke out even that many words. “Don’t you dare even suggest it. Don’t.”

His face was so calm that she almost hit him. She didn’t believe that calm, not an inch of it. Sensing it, or maybe just wanting to draw her attention, he gathered both her hands in his and held on. Her eyes darted over his features but couldn’t find anything to focus on so she shut them.

“You love him,” Jem started.

“Would you really say it?” Tessa asked, her eyes flying open.

“It’s true,” he said.

“I love him, yes, that’s true. Of course that’s true. You know that, you’ve known that for so long. That’s not what I meant. Don’t say it. Don’t say it. I don’t want it and I don’t even want to hear it,” she said.

“Tess,” he said again.

“I love you,” she said putting all the emphasis on you. She did choke on the emotion this time and he was wiping tears off her face when she said, “I love you and I waited lifetimes for you to come home to me. If you dare even suggest leaving, I don’t know what I’ll do. Don’t tell me you’re going to leave me for my own good or something stupid like that. Don’t even say it.”

“You would choose me over him?” Jem said it so softly she nearly missed it.

“Are you asking me to? Are you asking me to tell you that I love you more? Because I don’t. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you. But I have also never loved anyone the way that I loved him. There is no measure of it. There is no mathematical formula to explain it and make some definitive ruling. Love doesn’t work like that,” Tessa sounded angry and she stopped to collect herself.

Jem watched her as she swallowed and pulled all the scattered bits of her emotions back in close. She held onto his hands and looked down at their fingers. Hers were smaller and paler than his and the lattice of scars and old runes on his knuckles seemed to hold secrets the longer she looked at the patterns.

“I will go see him again. I will worry about him and I will fight the Clave on every terrible decision they make and I will love him. I can’t stop. He’s so young that he doesn’t know who he truly is yet. He isn’t Will as I want him to be and yet he is. I love this piece of him too. You of all people should understand that,” Tessa said. Jem nodded very slowly.

Her head snapped up and she looked him in the eye when she said the next part, “I shouldn’t have to tell you that I will never choose a life that doesn’t have you in it. I have never willingly chosen that life and I never will. Do not offer to leave me and think you’re doing me a favour,” she said. She wanted him to tell her that she was wrong and he hadn’t been planning on saying that. Sitting among those letters, wrapped up in the loss of Will, Jem was the thing that kept her sane. The very theory of him leaving was shattering and terrifying.

“Would you ask me not to see him?” she asked.

“I’m not asking you to do that. That’s not what I want. I just want you to be happy, I’d give up anything to make you happy,” Jem said catching her face between his hands.

“You make me happy,” she murmured. At some point in the conversation he’d gone from sitting beside her to kneeling in front of her. The sofa was low enough and he was tall enough that she only needed to lean down a little bit to accept the hug he offered. Whether he pulled her down or she slid into his lap on her own didn’t matter once she was wrapped in his arms.

“Promise me,” she said.

“I promise I won’t ask you to abandon him. He needs you. He’s always needed you. And Tessa, believe me, I would never leave you. I promise you that, I will never leave you. As long as you want me I am right here,” he said.

She nodded against his chest and he held her a little tighter.

She tilted her head up and kissed his neck just below his ear. He made a soft noise and relaxed. She pulled herself closer to him and kissed a line from his collar to his ear as he exhaled very slowly. They moved together without Tessa having to explain what she wanted. She swung her knees so that they straddled his and he held her close with his arms around her waist.

She could look at him properly now. She ran fingers over his eyebrows and his nose and his cheeks. She leaned in and kissed his eyes when they fell shut. Her fingers played over the shape of his mouth first and she paused before her lips followed.

“Tell me that again, the last part,” she said and he looked at her with eyes that were a little hazy.

“I love you and I will never leave you,” he said.

“I love you and I will always choose you,” she said and then she closed the kiss. He caught her head with a strong hand and prevented her from kissing him with the intensity she had intended. Instead she found herself being kissed gently and repeatedly. He kissed her lips, her cheeks, her throat and then started over again.

She protested how slow he was and he caught her wrists when she tried to slide her hands into his hair and pull him closer that way. His hands were large enough that it only took one to hold both her wrists in place. She fell still and gave him a very small smile. It was an offer.

There was a possessive streak in Jem that she rarely saw. She had never seen insecurity bring it out before. For a moment she was angry with herself for giving him any reason to doubt her but it settled fast. Doubts could be erased. He saw the change in her expression and stopped. They were nose to nose. His eyes were all question but the moment was silent.

“Anything you want, I’ll do whatever you ask,” she said.

“That’s a dangerous offer,” he said.

“Not with you,” she said. “I trust you.”

His hand was no longer holding her head, instead it lay flat against the side of her neck. The other one still held her wrists. He was considering her with dark eyes and just the hint of a smile. The Zachariah mask was long gone. There was no one here but her Jem.

“Would you rather I didn’t stop or made you wait for it?” Jem asked taking her silent offer and turning it into an idea that made her entire body warm just a little. . When they’d first been together, any request to put what he wanted into words was met with a flush that coloured his face to the roots of his hair. Those days were gone. These days he was much more demanding.

She considered his question as she spread her knees a little wider so their bodies were pressed together everywhere that she could manage. His eyes were darker and his hand on her wrists was just a little too tight. Anyone else might have been frightening but Tessa couldn’t imagine being frightened of Jem. He was asking to hold her down and offering the kind of sex that meant giving him complete control. He would push her from one orgasm into the next until she couldn’t quite remember her own name.

She still chose the other option, “Wait for it.”

His face broke into the first smile she’d seen on it since he’d grinned up at her on the Institute steps before seeing her expression.

“You don’t like that as much,” he said.

She felt herself blush when she said, “It’s maddening but I like it.”

“But you chose it because I like it,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “I like it but I love how much you like it.”

“I’m going to take my time and begging won’t help you,” he said and she could hear the offer in his voice to take another option.

“I don’t beg,” she said. She wanted possessive demanding Jem. She wasn’t going to take the offer of something gentler or easier because it would mean taking some of the edge off of his dark eyes and that little twitch of a smile.

“Yes, you do and you will tonight,” he spoke into her ear and every piece of too hot skin on her body shivered with the words. She felt the smile on his lips against her ear and her neck as he lifted her up to the sofa.

Jem when he was like this canceled out every demanding instinct of her own. She let him put her where he wanted her and she did as she was told. He stood up and she ran her fingers up his thighs to his waist band and he trapped her wrists again before she could touch anything she wanted. It was hard but she fell perfectly still and looked up at him.

“You get to go first otherwise it won’t last nearly as long as I plan for it to,” he said. She licked her lips and leaned back to wait for what he had planned. He kissed her gently and traced patterns on her neck with his finger tips. She stopped short of pulling him in against her but her fingers traced answering patterns up his arms and his chest and his face because she couldn’t stop from touching him.

It was compulsive the way that touching Will had been but this was perfectly matched gravity pulling them together. There was nothing standing in their way and she could throw herself into the pull of him without doubts or worries slowing her down.

He tugged on her sweater and gave her a puppy dog look so incongruous with his demanding body language that she laughed as pulled the shirt off and tossed it away. She didn’t look up to see but it landed on the same table where they had set Will’s box of letters. She was too busy watching Jem’s eyes for the next challenge.

His fingers moved over her shoulders and down her bare arms. She still wore a cotton bra and his fingers stepped over the strap as they moved towards her wrists. They stepped over again on their way back up. She was responding far to fast to fingers on her wrists and she tried to calm herself but forcing her breathing into sane patterns only helped until his fingers found her waist. The skin across her stomach crackled and she gasped as though he’d ran ice over her.

“This is too easy,” he said into her ear as he leaned down over her. She was usually able to manage her body better than this. He couldn’t usually shatter her self control this quickly. He was right. She was going to beg and she was going to do it far earlier than she usually would.

“How scandalized would Will be if I thanked him?” Jem asked. His mouth was against her skin and she could feel the same energy that crackled through her running in him as well.

She froze at Will’s name and found Jem’s face. It took her a moment to understand what he had said and then another to understand what it meant. She waited to see if pain came with the name but it didn’t. He knew that he’d said the wrong thing but he waited for her to react before he apologized. The energy crackled between them and she put her hands to his waist band and tucked her fingers into it to pull him a little closer.

“Very,” she said once she was sure the pain wasn’t coming, “I’m a little scandalized that you would say that and I’m not a Victorian teenager.”

Jem laughed softly in relief perhaps that he hadn’t destroyed the moment by saying that. She smiled back as he continued, “Do you want to be scandalized? I can be scandalous. I can tell you that if kissing him is going to get you this worked up then you should do it more often.”

“Jem!” she said.

“I don’t think I even need to touch you right now to get a reaction,” he said. His smile was easy and confident and her body betrayed her by shivering when he blew on the skin of her neck.

“You mean that,” she said looking at the smile.

“Yes, see,” he did it again and this time she didn’t react as strongly because she was too busy looking at his face.

“No, about kissing other people,” she said.

“Not other people, Will,” Jem said. “Is there anyone else you want to be kissing?”

“You,” she said softly.

“That’s unfortunate, I seem to have terrible aim tonight,” he said still grinning. He kissed her cheek and when she turned to meet him he dropped a little lower and kissed her on the chin then near her eyebrow. She laughed when he got her nose. His mouth was on her collarbone when she got tired of losing the game of hide and seek and tried to turn his face towards her with her hands.

He grabbed her wrists again and raised his eyebrows. His fingers ringed her wrists. She pouted just a little through her smile but honoured the terms of the game. She stopped struggling and sat still. Jem leaned in and touched her nose with his which made her laugh again.

“I thought you were doing as you were told tonight,” he said.

“So tell me what to do then,” she said.

“I would like you to take off the rest of your clothing,” he said.

There were smart ass comments to be made. There was any number of sarcastic things to say but instead she stood up and stood back and started pulling clothing off very slowly. He reached out and she shooed his hand away.

“No helping,” she said. “If you wanted to be the one to take my clothes off you should have said so. I’m only doing what I’m told.”

He laughed and sat back with his hands folded. The way he watched her made her want to blush and turn around. In the flood of shyness she closed the distance between them and this time when he put his hands on her bare thighs and slid up towards the last piece of clothing she still wore she didn’t stop him. He hooked his fingers into the waistband of her panties and pulled them down. He barely touched her and she barely contained a little gasp.

They stood together now. Him in dark jeans and a polo shirt and her wearing nothing at all. The room around them was quiet, even the cat had made himself scarce.

He never said it in so many words but she knew that he liked having her naked when he wasn’t. His eyes roamed over her body before his hands followed them. She leaned her face against his neck still seeking comfort as much as she sought the kind of touch he kept skipping over. He stroked her hair and offered that comfort but his hands traced frustratingly chaste lines down her back and arms and all the wrong parts of her stomach. She murmured a protest against his neck.

“Are you begging yet?” he asked.

“Shush,” she said shaking her head.

His hand closed on her breast. He was gentle but the change from no contact to that soft pressure made her gasp. She cuddled closer and arched her back to push herself against him. He caught her other breast in his other hand, still gentle.

“Look at me?” he said and she did. He held her breasts and he rubbed his thumbs over her nipples and watched her expression which she already had no control over.

“Time to go to bed,” he said before gathering her in a fireman’s carry and tossing her over his shoulder. She yelped in surprise and he laughed at her.

He dropped her onto her back in the middle of the bed and then climbed up after her. She spread her knees and lay flat in an offer she knew he wasn’t going to take yet. Just having him over her made her stomach tighten and he wasn’t touching her at all.

He kissed the skin near her knee and then kissed an excruciatingly slow line up the inside of her thigh. When his mouth made contact in the right place she tried to tell her body not to be so relieved. His tongue ran over her, tracing the lines and folds of her body there as she tried to stay still. He was slow and her fingers were in his hair tracing the same rhythm through the strands.

The contact changed and there was pressure to go with the movement. She adjusted her hips and let her head fall back. Her fingers were still in his hair but twisted now. His hands found her thighs and pinned them down to the mattress. Not hard but inescapable. She had been relaxing into him and he was reminding her of the offer she had made. This wasn’t going to end with the release she could feel building. This was going to end with frustration before he moved on to something else which would also end with frustration and the frustration would build until she was half mad with it.

When he stopped and pulled away she twisted from the hips but he was too strong for it to do any good. For a brief instinctual moment she fought his hands with all her strength. He didn’t even noticed the switch to a true struggle. The panicked realization that there was nothing at all she could do to stop him rocked through her but vanished when she met his eyes. Dark brown with just hints of gold and silver. The panic evaporated because it was Jem.

“Let go,” she whispered and he did. Immediately. Her breathing was too fast but that had more to do with what he hadn’t finished doing than the panicked moment. She stayed in the place where he had held her though his hands were braced on the mattress on either side of her waist and she could have pulled back from him easily.

He reached up to run his thumb along her lip and she pulled it into her mouth. His smile told her he got the hint but instead of taking off any of his clothing he wove his fingers into her hair and laid down beside her. She turned to keep him where she could see him as his fingers ran down her stomach and didn’t stop.

“Are you going to beg yet?” he asked touching places that would not bring her the release she still hovered at the edge of. He knew by touch where his fingers were and he watched her face while he walked them down her thigh then back again.

A stubborn competitiveness and just a little bit of pride made her shake her head and say, “You’re not even bothering me yet.”

“No?” he asked.

His fingers found their way inside and her mouth fell open as she pushed her hips down to meet the intrusion.

“Maybe just a little,” she said.

He stroked her hair and whispered little soothing noises into her ear as his hand stayed perfectly still. Two fingers as far inside as they could reach and his thumb not-so-accidentally brushing against her. He caught her hip with his other hand but couldn’t hold her in place as her hips tried to find the movement that he wouldn’t offer her.

“Don’t move, Tess,” he whispered into her ear.

She groaned but stopped moving. It took a lot more willpower than she thought she had left. He flicked his thumb over the very right spot and her whole body reacted. She yelped and it took a long few moments for her to settle to being still again. She was so close and she could feel that confident smile where his face rested beside her ear as he talked to her. It wasn’t just the physical contact that was making her body feel too hot. It was also how much Jem liked each reaction. Each time she was sure she couldn’t do it again, she would feel the smile against her ear or he’d slide his body in just a little closer to her. He was lying right against her when he thrust with his fingers and pushed her too close to the edge and she cried out.

He stopped and left her at the start of the orgasm. She wasn’t quite sure what she was saying when he kissed her but it was probably begging. She felt needy and desperate enough for it to be begging. She lost herself in the kiss. He had laced his fingers with hers and held them above her head against the pillow so she couldn’t use her hands to finish what his had started. His knees were between hers so she couldn’t close them. She didn’t care for a moment. She threw all her frustration into the kiss and he answered her intensity with his own.

There was a moment of confusion when she found herself kneeling with him on the bed. She didn’t quite remember how she had gotten from flat on her back to sitting. His arm was around her waist which was a pretty good clue. She twisted her fingers into his shirt and tried to remember how it came off. He did it for her and she kissed her way down his neck and across his shoulder. Then she worked her way down to his stomach. He had to stand to get his pants off.

Once he was as naked as she was she considered trying to match his teasing but she wanted too much to even attempt it. He had to brace his hand on the wall to avoid falling over while standing on the mattress. He was already hard and he groaned when she ran her tongue over him. She caught him in her hands and settled her breathing and found enough shards of calm to remember the things that he liked.

He took her wrists and she froze in confusion and looked up at him.

“I want you to, just no hands,” he said.

She nodded because she didn’t trust herself to speak. He held her wrists, one in each hand while she took him back into her mouth. It was harder to do without a hand to guide the angle. With him inside her mouth she ran her tongue along the bottom of the shaft and he responded with not a shift of his hips but a thrust that pushed it too far back. She pulled away with a caught and he dropped down in front of her with an apology that she interrupted with a kiss.

“You’re a little needy,” he laughed, “Do you want something?”

“I need you,” she said and kissed him again.

He pushed her and she fell back onto the mattress. He positioned himself in just the right place but didn’t enter her.

“Relax,” he said, “Stay still.”

She let out a hiss of breath, she knew he was close and she had thought it was over. Once she was still he pushed into her just a little and then linked his fingers with hers again and stretched them up over her head. He held her in place as effectively as if he had tied her down and the competitive part of her tested how tightly he held on. They were nose to nose and he grinned at her and held a little tighter when she tugged on the restraint.

“Try a little harder,” he said and she was struggling against him in response to the challenge when he entered her. He slid all the way in and she cried out. They were pressed together. His weight held her down but all she cared about was that he was finally close enough. She was begging now, pleading with her mouth against his. He held still just long enough to convince her that she couldn’t survive this near release any longer.

He moved from his hips, a slow rolling motion that pressed her down against the mattress. He held her hands a little tighter and stretched her arms a little farther. There weren’t any spaces between them and he stayed that tight to her even as he started to thrust harder and then harder still as his own control finally fell apart.

All the control was his, she barely had the room to move to meet him though her body knew his well enough to match the thrusts. He might have been close but she was far closer. He managed to stop before she came.

“Damn it Jem, please don’t stop,” she said. The panic didn’t come back though she was more tightly held in place than she had been before. He was still inside her and she was so close that she couldn’t stop the little rocking of her hips.

“Are you begging?” he asked.

“Yes, please, yes,” she said.

He rolled them so she was astride him and the switch from helplessness to being on top made her freeze for a second. She had forgotten how to do it but then he was inside her again and her conscious mind’s inability to remember how her legs worked didn’t matter.

She rocked against him until her back arched and she screamed. He pulled her down and kissed her as he rolled her back onto her back and pinned her again. It was a sort of relief to have him take the control back. He didn’t stop and she found herself trapped on the crest of the orgasm instead of the start of it. She was incoherent and when he released her hands she wrapped her arms around him and held on. She was shaking when he came as hard as she had and they collapsed together.

They were wrapped up in each other, tight and close. He stroked her skin wherever his fingers found it and she let any last shreds of anxiety go. He was hers. Jem Carstairs belonged right there and she knew it was true beyond any doubt. The little happy almost tune he was humming against her temple as he ran his fingers over her skin let her know that he knew it too. 


	16. Other People

Will was sitting in the library when Maryse came in with the bundle and dumped it on the same table where he sat. He smoothed the instinctual scowl off of his face before he looked up at her. She was neatly dressed and she had carefully painted blue nails that matched her eyes. Will found himself using her as a benchmark for what counted as respectable in this century.

She gave him a brief smile before turning to her papers and he went back to his book. It felt strange to sit at a table with the woman like they were friends. He didn’t think of Maryse as his friend. He was only barely starting to think of Alec as his friend and Maryse was his mother. Will stole little glances at what she was doing.

He tried to imagine having the job that she held, the job that Charlotte did every day. If Jem was right it was a job that he would do as well. He started watching a little more carefully to try and figure out what system she was using to organize the papers.

“Did Tessa learn anything interesting?” Maryse asked. Tessa’s name rocked Will back into the moment. He stopped considering the seals on the envelopes and instead tried to push out the powerful memory of Tessa’s expression when she had told him she loved him.

“Not much,” Will said. “There doesn’t seem to be much to learn. The spell that was following me before wasn’t there. Nothing much happened.”

Jem had driven him around the neighbourhood in his charcoal gray horseless carriage with leather seats and a sound system that played music from hidden places. Will had enjoyed watching the cars go by and seeing the little shops that were tucked into the bottoms of the very tall buildings. It had been much like riding in a carriage at home but smoother and quieter and with far more levers and buttons than were required to control a horse.

Jem had tried to talk him out of feeling anxious and guilty. It hadn’t quite worked. Jem was far too kind and he forgave things that should have been unforgivable. Once that had been an essential part of their friendship but Will had hoped that he was becoming someone better. Someone who deserved even a fraction of the support and friendship Jem offered him.

“So are you that angry with Tessa too?” Jem had asked him as they crossed a bridge and headed towards the freeway.

Will hadn’t had a response for that. He wasn’t angry with Tessa. He was furious with himself for having kissed her but couldn’t put any of that anger on her. She had been so immeasurably sad when she’d told him that she had loved him for his entire life. He had taken advantage. The longer he thought about it the more ways he had found to blame himself.

“Jem took me driving on the freeway, it was terrifying,” Will said. He hadn’t known human beings could build something that traveled that fast. The drive through the neighbourhood had been faster than a carriage ride would have been but hadn’t been extreme. The freeway was another matter and Jem’s tendency to weave through larger vehicles at atrocious speeds made Will question ever considering him the more stable one. Maryse flashed him a brief smile. She looked like Isabel when she smiled and almost against his will, Will saw her more as a person and less as an envoy of the Clave keeping the doors locked.

“I figured as much,” Maryse said.

“And what’s that?” Will asked.

“That they were taking you out to play and not to study magics,” she said. She had paused and frowned over a letter in her hands.

“And you let them?” Will asked.

“You overestimate my powers if you think I have any ability to stop either of them. Besides, Za- James helped to save my son’s life and he did it on your behalf. I still remember the phrasing, ‘the debt I owe the Herondale family is deeper than any I owe the Clave.’ Silent Brothers do not talk like that. I owe you much more than an opportunity for a Sunday drive. Tessa gave me a good reason to let you out and you are not injured nor has history collapsed around us. Let us all continue to pretend that important magics were studied and we are closer to understanding what happened in Venice,” Maryse said with a wave of her hand.

She grimaced at her work as she opened a thick folder and poured the contents onto the table. Will was now fighting for his ability to continue to dislike her.

“You were head of the London Institute,” she said.

“So they tell me,” Will said in a flat voice.

“So you aren’t yet?” she said.

“No, Charlotte Branwell is,” he told her. “Considering how they treat her I can’t imagine the circumstances that led to her promotion but then I can’t imagine anyone being mad enough to appoint me either.”

“The Clave is madness and fickle politics. For all that it resists change the political changes are never ending. Aside from politics, the worst part, and you will understand this one day, the worst part of running an Institute is all of this,” she gestured at the pile.

“These are all the little things. The complaints, the requests for audience, the petitions and pleas for help. And there are so many you will never be able to manage them all and they will continue to come forever. This isn’t even my pile. This is Rome’s pile because now I get to sift through everything even tangentially related to Venice. Zachariah couldn’t have called in the local Shadowhunters and left this an Italian problem now could he?”

“You don’t have help?” Will asked. In London this sort of job had often been done by the entire group of them. He hadn’t seen many other Shadowhunters beyond the adult Lightwood children and their friends.

“Have you met Ishaan and Erika?” she asked.

“No, they have been kept far away from my terrible influence,” Will said. He knew of their existence, young Shadowhunters left orphaned by the Dark War they had been taken in by the Institute. They were in their early teens, younger than Will but still closer to his age than Jace and Alec were. He hadn’t met them though he had seen them being herded out of rooms before he entered them.

“We’re trying to maintain -” Maryse started.

Will cut her off, “I know. No, I have not met Ishaan and Erika.”

“They’re a little stupid. Kind enough in Ishaan’s case and a marvelous fighter in Erika’s but sheltered in some ways. They are not good choices to help sort correspondence. No one else is technically under my direct command within these walls. The Shadowhunter community is so small these days. There are those in the city I could call on to help and they would be required to come but it would make them cranky to be called in to sort the post,” the last two words she said in a very heavy fake British accent. Her normal accent was pure Idris. To a Shadowhunter it was an immediately recognizable accent but to the rest of the world it was somewhere between British and French with just a touch of the singsong rhythm of an Italian.

Will was bored and he was used to this being the sort of task he was called on to do. He could also hear something of Charlotte’s need to prove herself without asking for outside assistance in Maryse’s voice. She didn’t seem to Will to have anything left to prove. She was Institute Head and everyone he had seen speak to her did so with the utmost respect but the uncertainty was there under her words.

He reached out and dragged a piece of the pile from Rome over to himself and started reading. Maryse smiled at him not like he was a problem to be solved but like he was a person.

 

He looked up more than an hour later when Jem entered the room. He had spread a few papers out in front of himself and was rereading them, trying to make sure he was right before he waved Maryse over from where she’d moved on to New York’s business. His pile of discarded messages detailing various complaints was far larger than the seventeen pieces in front of him.

Jem came and leaned over his shoulder to look at it all. Will was so absorbed in the problem that he didn’t remember to be uncomfortable with Jem’s presence. Jem’s promises from the day before that kissing Tessa wasn’t something he would hold against him came trickling back into Will’s attention slowly. Having a real problem to sort out was a marvelous distraction.

Jem had told him that he knew and had known for a very long time and it wasn’t nearly as comforting as it should have been. Will tried to imagine living with that unspoken secret. Something everyone knew and no one talked about. Will very carefully didn’t think about that as he waited for Jem’s brain to finish turning over the information on the table.

He was sure but Jem hadn’t confirmed it so it wasn’t true yet.

“When?” Jem asked tapping a piece of paper.

“Two weeks before,” Will told him lifting up the sheet to show him the one beneath it. He’d stacked the matching documents up with the oldest on the bottom and the most recent on the top.

“There are gaps,” Jem said.

“Mundanes don’t send requests to the Nephilim,” Will said. “Everything else is accounted for.”

Jem leaned past him and read a few of the repeated requests for assistance where they had piled up. He leaned his elbows against the scratched table surface as he picked things up and then started reorganizing Will’s layout. He left little spaces in between some of the piles.

“Am I right on the time?” he asked.

“These two disappeared at the same time and she went missing over a week before but otherwise yes, you’ve got the order right,” Will said.

“What is it?” Maryse appeared at the desk and sat down across from them.

“Missing persons,” Jem said.

“Missing downworlders,” Will corrected, “Look at the dates.”

It took Maryse longer to see what Jem had seen almost immediately but then no one else understood the inner workings of Will’s brain as well as Jem did.

The dates lined up with the dates that the portals had dropped the Arrivals in Venice. A few days before in most cases over a week in the two unusual ones.

“These are Nephilim,” Maryse said picking up one of the little piles. “They’re a parabatai team from Idris. They’ve only been gone two weeks but they were meant to be recruiting so no one noticed until Sergei’s wife complained that the Clave was keeping him away for too long.”

“Alison and I are Nephilim,” Will said, “There’s only two of us. Look at the dates on the werewolf here. She matches up with Edith’s Arrival almost exactly.”

“The spell is switching people,” Jem said. “It isn’t just pulling people out of time it’s dropping others back into their places. Sergei is probably standing on the street corner that Will left and Celina is likely wherever Alison was when she disappeared.”

Maryse swore colourfully and Will grinned at her.

Though she thanked them for their help she then told them to leave. Neither of them were officially Clave members and she was going to have to call the Consul and the other Institutes to start tracking this new information.

“Aren’t you a Clave member?” Will asked Jem as they walked down the hall. Will felt better than he had in days. He and Jem had solved a problem as they were meant to, as they always had. It felt like there might be some movement on figuring out how they arrived and how they might be returned. Will was nearly giddy with it.

“Retired,” Jem said. “Which largely means they pay me to stay out of their way. Ex-Silent Brothers are not a thing that happens. I make normal people rather uncomfortable. That Tessa defies definition almost as much as I do and has something of a history of being contrary to the Clave just makes keeping us out of everyone’s hair more of a motivator.”

“You’ve been around a lot here,” Will said.

“You’re here,” Jem said and Will smiled at the way he stated it as a simple fact. “I occasionally stop by to say hello to Jace and the others and Tessa spends almost as much time with Magnus and Alec and that baby as she does with me but as to Clave dealings, we don’t get involved if we can avoid it.”

“We used to be we,” Will said.

“We’re still we,” Jem immediately understood what he meant.

“We should go on patrol,” Will said.

“We aren’t allowed,” Jem said. “You’re under house arrest and I’m not a Clave member.

“Bollocks,” Will said. “I can’t spend any more time thinking. I need to get out of this place before I start beating the walls and screaming like a Bedlamite. Maryse can’t stop us from leaving.”

“But when the people she is currently calling show up to ask questions and make nuisances of themselves we will need to be here,” Jem said. “Don’t start trouble just because you’re bored.”

“I’m not bored,” Will snapped and once his mouth was open words just kept coming out, “I’m spending all my time thinking about kissing Tessa and I can’t do that. Either the thinking or the kissing. I am losing my mind and if you say just about anything right now you will make it worse so shut up.”

Will bit back the anger as Jem gave him an even look and then a little bit of a smile before he said, “How about I beat the hell out of you?”

“Excuse me?” Will asked.

“I can rather easily take you in a fight right now,” Jem said. “You’re off balance and I am drastically better than I used to be and I was already much better than you back then.”

“Stop creating alternate versions of history, Carstairs,” Will said.

“Try me,” Jem said.

More time in the training room was not going to solve a single one of Will’s problems but he couldn’t turn down the challenge. That Jem could manipulate him quite that easily annoyed him but didn’t change the fact that it worked. Jem was providing him a distraction from everything that crept back in as soon as Maryse had taken away his problem.

They’d trained together since he’d arrived but they hadn’t actually set a challenge like this. They argued terms of what counted as winning or losing and whether they would play to rounds or a single bout. Jem had done this to him once not long after they’d met, before the parabatai bond had been forged. He had such a great advantage in training that he’d cajoled and challenged Will into a fight that he couldn’t win. When Jem had started getting worse they’d stopped actually trying to best one another because it stopped being a fair challenge but that first challenge had been a lesson for Will. He’d thrown himself into training differently after that.

He hated to lose and he had been impressed. He worked first to be as fast as Jem was then to be able to match the graceful ways of turning falls into attacks. Bit by bit, he trained Jem’s Shadowhunter grace into his own fighting style.

Jem left his shoulder bag in Will’s room and went to change into a borrowed set of training gear. By the time they made it upstairs the terms were set and Will was looking forward to it. He’d agreed begrudgingly because though he was loathe to admit it, Jem was better. He knew it but he stood in the room ready to start that fight anyways.

Jem tossed him a staff once they’d made sure there was no one in the room to question whether or not they were actually trying to kill each other. The piece of wood was as tall as he was and he stepped out into the center of the room where he would have room to swing it.

“What’s this?” Will asked.

“It’s a damn stick,” Jem said with a smile that told him there was more to that statement than he understood. He started to question it but Jem took his feet out from under him with an easy swipe of the stick.

“Damn it,” Will said from where he lay on his back.

“Point for me. I told you it was a damn stick,” he said.

“Ass,” Will said but he came up swinging. Arguing that Jem wasn’t playing fair wasn’t worth it. He’d tried before but apparently Jem’s mother was the type of person who taught fairness based on a model that other human beings would never understand. It was probably the reason that Jem had managed to accept his illness without losing his will to live. It also meant he didn’t always fight in a way Will considered proper.

He also fought better than Will had expected. Will had expected to lose but not like this. It had taken years of work but Will considered himself to be very good. Jem was better. Jem wasn’t just a little better but leaps and bounds better. He was making good on his offer. Will was bruised by too stubborn to back down. Jem hadn’t even had to get close. He moved in and took Will down with two or three strikes of the damn stick. Over and over.

“You did not get this good in the last few years,” Will said.

“I was a Silent Brother for two lifetimes. That’s a lot more than a few years. I’m actually very out of practice. I trained a lot more there than I do here,” Jem said.

“150 some years of training,” Will said.

“Against your - what is it - five?” Jem smiled. Will tried to catch him by surprise but Jem blocked the strike easily and parried back a few steps before he knocked Will down again.

“You’re intentionally being an ass,” Will said.

“That may be true,” Jem said. Will had gotten to his feet and was moving in again. When Jem lunged in he dropped his own staff and grabbed Jem’s. It wasn’t enough to stop him from falling but he pulled Jem down with him. He ended up on his back again but this time Jem wasn’t standing over him looking smug. He was sprawled against him looking startled. Not a win but at least not so definitively a loss.

“Ass,” Jem told him and when Will met his eyes to say something else the look there wasn’t what he expected. Will’s own comment died on his lips though he couldn’t quite say why. There was nothing in the look that Will could put into words. He had stopped questioning that Jem’s dark eyes were truly Jem’s but he hadn’t been close enough to see the little bits that had never regained their colour and still flashed silver like stars in the black of night.

He got lost in them for a moment and he could feel Jem’s breath on his cheek. Will laughed softly though he didn’t know why and Jem pushed up and backpedaled.

“What were you -” Will started as he followed him out into the room.

“Nothing sane,” Jem interrupted him and he looked towards the window without seeming to see it.

“You’ve still got silver in your eyes,” Will said.

“Yes, Tess will tell you something poetic about starry nights if you mention it to her but yes, the recovery wasn’t perfect. My lungs are never going to be as healthy as they should be either, too much damage to ever be entirely healed,” Jem said and he still didn’t look away from the window.

Will hadn’t seen Jem off balance in a very long time. Even when Tessa had been sick he had been the stable one, the one giving orders and organizing everything. Now he was rambling about his lungs. Will grinned at him feeling suddenly just as unbalanced but irrationally happier about it.

“What were you thinking?” Will asked him closing the distance. Jem’s body language changed, just a little defensive as he felt Will move towards him. Will still wasn’t sure what to expect but the thrill of being able to make Jem uneasy made him want to laugh even if he didn’t know why he was able to do it.

“Nothing sane,” Jem repeated finally looking at him and the pieces of his calm and collected persona were sliding back into place over the emotions underneath. Will sometimes forgot that there were emotions underneath. Jem seemed too calm to have anything unbalanced hiding under the surface.

Will wanted to stop the calm from sliding back in. He wanted to know who this Jem was, this one who shifted his shoulders in discomfort and had a nervous tick in his fingers. Did Tessa get to see Jem with his walls down like this? Was this new, some after effect of being a Brother or had there always been a turbulent person hidden under Jem’s easy calm?

Will stepped in so they were nose to nose again and rather than reeling back or shoving him off, Jem fell still and met his gaze briefly. Jem caught him by the shoulders but didn’t move more than that. He didn’t hold him, he just put his hands there. Contact like all the little moments of touch they had made a part of their time together.

They were closer again and Will couldn’t remember how it had happened. Jem hadn’t been able to hold his gaze but he looked up again and this time he didn’t shy away. The look was back. The look that Will couldn’t decipher though he always understood Jem. It held him but he couldn’t make sense of it.

Then Jem tilted his head and they were breathing the same air for a moment. A moment that stretched and was both longer and shorter than seemed possible. Jem hesitated but Will finally understood it and answered it not with a look but the kiss that Jem hadn’t been able to start.

It was just a brush of lips. Jem’s eyes fell shut and then snapped open and Will had a moment of panic that he had misread the look but it was still there and had an incredulous smile to go with it. Jem’s defensiveness fell away and he kissed him properly with that smile still on the corners of his mouth. He pulled him in and kissed him hard.

Will could count his kisses. He would run out of kisses before he ran out of fingers. For every girl he’d ever kissed that felt like the right phrase, he had done the kissing. Even Tessa’s responsiveness and the way she could demand things with a nuzzle didn’t feel like this.

Jem did the kissing. He took the lead.

Will let him. He might have imagined Jem as gentle but there was none of that gentleness in this kiss. He pulled Will in and held him where he wanted him to be and it didn’t occur to Will to do anything but follow where he was guided.

The arm around his waist held him close and Jem was strong enough that it felt inescapable. Not that he tried. He had an arm around Jem’s neck and the other hand was fisted into his shirt. Jem tasted a little of coffee and Will couldn’t remember when the kiss had become so much deeper. His stomach twisted each time he felt Jem’s tongue.

Jem paused and they were breathing hard as he caught Jem’s face between his hands. He knew it was Jem. It could be no one else. Still, he was surprised to find Jem’s partly open mouth and his night sky eyes there in front of him. The real world tugged on his attention but he ignored it in favour of being the one to start this one. Jem responded but didn’t try to take back the lead.

Not unlike his failures on the training floor, kissing Jem left him feeling like he was the graceless one. A clumsy child playing at a game he didn’t quite understand. Will backed them up into a wall and was surprised out of the kiss by the impact. Jem gave him a smile that said he wasn’t doing nearly as poorly as he had feared.

The kisses had been hard. Desire and surprise and feelings that hadn’t ever had a shape before. Will considered the depth of his own madness as he looked at Jem’s face. The feelings hadn’t been intended to have a shape. They hadn’t ever needed his attention before. They had always been easy to ignore. He hadn’t even noticed that he was ignoring them.

Jem put up a hand and covered Will’s mouth.

“Shut up,” Jem said. “You’re right, you are right about all the reasons that we shouldn’t do that. You are. But before you say any of them, before you tell me any of the very good reasons why I can’t, I am going to do that again.”

Will wasn’t entirely sure that that was what he had been about to say but he was certain it wasn’t that. He couldn’t think of any good reasons why they needed to stop. He nodded because he wanted Jem to do it again and to hell with everything else.

This time it wasn’t hard or demanding. It as softer. Will’s eyes fell shut and he let himself be pulled down into it. This wasn’t desire or shock. It took him a moment to place it but when he did his heart stuttered. This was how Jem had kissed Tessa after the fire. This kiss spoke of love and protection and the happiness that came from just having another person nearby. This was the kind of kiss that Will had been sure he would never truly find.

When he pulled away, his thumb stroked Will’s cheek. Will smiled at him and said, “How long have you been thinking of doing that?”

“I don’t know. Not long,” Jem said. Jem held him easily, like they’d always been this close together. His hand had settled onto a place on Will’s lower back where it simply fit. Will pushed a piece of Jem’s hair away from his face and let the strands fall back through his fingers. He could feel Jem’s stomach move as he breathed.

He hadn’t been able to calm himself enough to accept Tessa’s attempts at comforting him but this was so utterly unexpected that his anxiety hadn’t caught up to what was happening. He let himself relax into the moment. This moment was too impossible to be happening and he didn’t stop himself from enjoying it.

“Maybe that’s not quite true. Maybe I’ve wanted to do that forever,” Jem said cracking a smile and looking away from Will just a little, “But not in words, not in actions, it never occurred to me until you kissed my forehead on the balcony the other night. I almost kissed you then. I think I’ve wanted it longer than that but it just never seemed like a possibility.”

“There are rules about this,” Will said and the real world tugged on the edges of the moment but Jem was nuzzling his cheek as he spoke and the real world couldn’t quite make it in through that feeling.

“Neither of us are really subject to them,” Jem said.

“Tessa might be bothered that you are kissing other people,” Will said but he couldn’t find the energy to make it a true objection. He was already lost and he couldn’t find his way back. He had spent so long building defenses against his feelings for Tessa but he hadn’t thought to build defenses against his feelings for Jem. Now Jem was so far past his walls and it felt too much like coming home for him to want it to stop.

“Tessa kissed you first,” Jem said and he kissed Will’s jaw as he said it and the kiss lingered before he looked Will right in the eye and he said the next part. They were chest to chest and Will was sure his heartbeat was loud enough to echo off the walls, “You are not other people. We call you our missing piece sometimes. The same piece missing from two different lives. You aren’t ‘other people’ Will, you’re a part of us.”

The door swung open and Will heard it creak. Jem stepped away from him and was suddenly Zachariah again. He stood tall and serious and raised his eyebrows at the person who had come through the door. Will was still hidden by a rack of swords and he took a little longer to reassemble himself.

“There are envoys of the Clave who would like to speak to you Brother Zachariah,” the person in the door said. Will didn’t both registering who it was. Jem was answering their questions and generally being the one in charge.

Down in the library they sat shoulder to shoulder, touching but not in anyway that anyone else might notice. Will was surprised to feel more grounded by the contact. The kiss hadn’t brought with it any awkwardness. Will kept expecting it and it kept not coming. He was calm. Jem was here and they would manage everything else as it came, together. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun world building detail that didn't make it into the story: Rome is really far away from Venice and it doesn't technically make much sense for Rome to be in charge of managing Venice's Downworld but the proximity to Idris makes Northern Italy a dead zone for Downworld - a very small, very stable population that exists on good terms with Idris because they are so close to it. It's actually why Venice is where the arrival's portal is dropping them (this may yet be mentioned in the story but at one point was a major plot point but now kind of isn't). If Tessa and Jem hadn't gotten involved it would have taken forever for anyone to notice anything was amiss there. Shadowhunters don't look for trouble in their own very stable backyard. 
> 
> If you were wondering about how much thought I've put into world building this fic - Institute distribution in foreign countries that might give you some insight into my brain. 
> 
> Someone on tumblr posted a thing once about Jem's mom being the type of person to push you to run a mile and then when it was over - and you were lying on the ground dying - tell you that she'd actually forced you to run 2 and she was very proud. That has become my foundation for how I think about her character - her sense of fair is bizarre.


	17. Alison

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fixed this chapter. If you read it on February 27th or February 28th, you should head about halfway down and read the rest. It is now much longer and actually finishes the scene. I apologize that the first post wasn't complete. I had to readjust what was included. It is now twice as long as it was.

The most noticeable thing in the room should have been the angry woman standing in the middle of the floor yelling at just about everyone. Tessa barely registered her. Her attention caught and held on the piece of the past standing across the room with a bemused smile he probably should have tried to hide on his face. Will wore black trousers and a white shirt he had rolled to his elbows. It had one button undone at the collar but he’d taken the time to tuck it in. He leaned one shoulder against the wall with his arms crossed. How many times had she seen him like that in years gone by? The answer must have been in the hundreds. She knew what he was doing. He looked disinterested but he would be able to recite back everything that was said.

Jem stood beside him, looking incongruously like the younger one in jeans and a t-shirt and those blue shoes. He stood straight and looked alert though Tessa was sure that he was paying less attention to what was being said. He was picking up on all the strange details Will missed. Will could tell you exactly what had been said. Jem would be able to tell you what someone was feeling when they did.

It had been so long since she’d seen them together like this that she had forgotten it. They filled in one another’s gaps. One’s weaknesses became a part of the other’s strengths. They stood close enough to touch and when Jem’s attention moved, Will’s followed it. They acted in tandem even when they were just watching a conversation unfold.

“They are alarmingly pretty, your boys,” Magnus whispered at Tessa elbow and she jumped a little. She turned to look at him and he shrugged elegantly. She found a seat on the far side of the room from where Will and Jem stood and Magnus followed her. He turned his attention back to the room. She gave her boys as he called them another look before she let the yelling finally have her attention. Jem smiled at her and a moment later Will’s attention found her as well and he looked a touch startled beneath his cultivated disinterest. She gave him her best impression of Jem’s kind smile and his eyes softened as he returned it.

“This should not have been a surprise,” the woman in the middle of the room said. She was narrow with dark skin and long thin braids pulled back into a tight hairstyle at the back of her head. She was in her 50s and looked distinctly familiar. Tessa tried to place her to some Clave meeting or another.

“Was she at the Battle of Alicante?” Tessa asked Magnus in a low voice.

“Probably but that’s not why you recognize her,” he said. Tessa was silent as she looked the woman over. “Try to imagine less conservative navy and more neon orange.”

“Alison?” Tessa hissed. Magnus pointed finger guns at her and gave her a sarcastic smile that made her smack him in the shoulder. Someone nearby looked at them. They gave him matching ‘don’t mind the warlocks’ smiles before going back to their whispered conversation, “I would not have pictured her growing up to wear business suits.”

“I don’t think she did either,” Magnus said pointing across the room. Alison, the one in her 20s whom Tessa had met, was in the room as well. She was not wearing neon but she was wearing tight jeans and spike heels that she might have borrowed from Isabelle Lightwood. Her shirt showed a lot of skin. She was the antithesis of the woman in the middle of the room. She did not look happy.

Magnus filled Tessa in at that same low volume. When the Shadowhunter near them glanced back again as though nervous to have warlocks plotting behind him, Magnus switched to a purgatic dialect that sounded much more menacing. Tessa sighed because she had to concentrate much harder to make sense of what he was saying. She knew enough of the language to do it but it took far more effort. The little glares made it almost worth it but Magnus seemed to find it much funnier than she did.

Through the purgatic and Magnus’s editorializing on fashion choices she was able to put together what was going on. A new piece of information had come to light and a group of Shadowhunters who had been working on recreating the maps of where each individual had been when they disappeared had been brought in to see if there was a pattern to be found. Alison, the older one, was a member of that group but all information up to that point had been provided blind. She hadn’t known she would be walking into a room with her younger self.

“This language doesn’t have a word for boots,” Magnus said before he tried a couple of circular translations including saying ‘large foot and leg covering’ in a few different combinations. It came out sounding like an incantation to raise a demon. A different Shadowhunter turned around to frown at them and Magnus dropped his volume as he tried to translate “foot sheath” but it wasn’t much less cumbersome to say and still sounded like a spell for dark magic.

“What is the pattern we’re looking for?” Tessa interrupted in English. She wasn’t willing to play his language hopping games.

“Oh, right, there are missing persons who match up with each arrival,” Magnus said then his voice turned drawling, “Your very pretty boys put it together. We’re all very proud.”

“You’re in an unusual mood,” she said.

“It was a good day. Was. Anna has decided she’s going to be a writer and Alec has been teaching her to write letters all morning. It is adorable. Disgustingly adorable. I’m a little nauseated just thinking about it,” his smile was not nauseated, “Then we got some baby free time while she went shopping with Auntie Izzy and that was going very well but now I am here with you. Not that you aren’t lovely but this,” he waved a hand covered in rings at the arguing Shadowhunters, “Is not how I wanted to spend my afternoon.”

“So leave,” she said. “I can take official warlock notes for you.”

Magnus leaned out a bit and shot a pointed look at Alec who was sitting near his mother and looked just as involved in the argument as anyone else. Tessa laughed at his cranky look. She felt a little like the student misbehaving in class as a few more people looked their way. From across the room, Jem raised his eyebrows at her. She rolled her eyes at Magnus and he gave her a crooked smile that made her think about things that were far away from the patterns in magic and geography that everyone else was discussing.

The woman who Alison would grow into was at the center of it all. Poise and authority and not a small amount of Alison’s attitude. The longer she watched her, the more Tessa could see that they were the same person. She knew, better than most people, how much a person could change over the years. This was Alison’s Shadowhunter arrogance all grown up. Tessa didn’t find herself liking this woman any more than she liked the younger version but she was certainly impressive.

When the circular conversations started to break up, Tessa left Magnus to his sarcasm and annoyance and crossed the room to Jem and Will. They were leaned in, heads together as they talked. Jem had his hand on Will’s arm and there was something about their body language that made the moment feel just a little too private. She paused before she had finished closing the distance.

It was Will who turned to her first and he surprised her by reaching out a hand. She took it and he tugged her in so she stood closer. It was a very conscious action and he watched her reaction carefully as though trying to decide if it was the right one. She smiled at him and adjusted her fingers to hold his more securely. He echoed the smile. It was so endearingly self conscious that she almost kissed him again even though it had gone so poorly the last time.

Will squeezed her fingers and then dropped her hand. The gesture made her heart hurt. He took her hand while Jem stood beside him and told her with just a brush of fingers that something Jem had said had gotten through. It was almost an apology. Almost a request. He was calmer than he had been but there was something he needed to say and it ran through him like a current.

He held all her attention.

Will squeezed her fingers and said softly, “I would like to speak to you.”

“Of course,” she said before glancing at Jem to see if he had any clues as to what was about to happen. He gave her a little flash of a smile but it wasn’t really an explanation. She let her guard down. Jem would look worried if it were something she needed to be concerned about. Jem didn’t look worried.

Will offered her his arm in a charmingly old fashioned gesture. He probably didn't even realize that it was old fashioned. She took it and Jem fell into step on her other side as they ducked out of the room before any of the little scattered conversations could grab hold of them. Tessa needed to know if Will was alright far more than she needed to answer questions about portals or hear about how strange it was to meet a younger version of yourself. If she held onto his arm a little tighter than was proper, he didn't comment on it.

The room they found themselves in was a sort of study room. It had a table and a blackboard and an oil painting of a street scene in Alicante. Jem hopped up onto the table beneath that painting and swung his feet. It made him seem young. Tessa looked at him. He was very happy and a little anxious. Usually a room full of Shadowhunters pushed him into being Brother Zachariah but there was none of that distance in him right now. He was utterly present, bright and alert.

"Having him here is good for you, have you noticed that?" Tessa said to him. She still stood with Will but Jem swinging his feet held her attention. Jem tilted his head and considered that and then laughed and looked down at the floor.

Will shifted just slightly beside her and looked at Jem like he had lost his grip on reality. His discomfort turned her back to him. He was calmer than he had been when she'd last seen him but he was still oceans away from being truly comfortable. Maybe he never would be, maybe he would go home without ever being able to relax in this time and place. Tessa's heart recoiled at the idea of sending him home but she was certain she managed to keep it off her face as she turned to look up at him.

Will was serious. He glanced past her at Jem and whatever expression Jem shot him annoyed him. He frowned and Tessa smiled just a little bit. She was careful with her expressions. She was careful with the words she assembled to say to him. She was not going to make him more uncomfortable.

"Would you like to let me in on the secret?" Tessa asked.

Will’s eyes were deep, dark blue and held hers. She wasn’t sure she could look away from him if a bomb had gone off beside them. Will was assembling things to say as carefully as she was but he kept discarding them before he actually managed to get the words out. She waited.

"I kissed him," Will said and he made it almost sound like a question.

"I started it," Jem said.

It was Jem that Tessa turned to look at and he was nearly laughing. She started to say something and then stopped because she wasn't quite sure what words she needed. Will didn't seem to find it quite as funny but there was something about Jem's humour that was catching and Will's lip pulled up in a little half smile. Tessa looked between them again. She was sure that they were being ridiculous on purpose.

"He pushed me up against a wall," Jem said in response to Tessa's expression and it wasn't the words that made her reconsider, it was Will's reaction to them. He looked away from her and coloured just a little. Will did not blush. It simply did not happen. Tessa looked between them for a moment and then she laughed and leaned into Will's shoulder.

"I'm sorry. That was an inappropriate reaction," she said a moment later. She had her hand over her mouth and still held onto Will's arm. Will was too startled to pull away from her.

"I was not expecting hysterics," Jem said but he still looked amused.

"I wasn't expecting this at all," she said. She pointed at Jem. She was smiling more in response to his giddiness than anything else. She was still barely convinced that they weren’t pulling jokes on her, "You've gone emotional. You're really happy about this."

"It was really very good. You'd know that," he flashed her a smile that made her raise her eyebrows at him. Tessa looked up at Will to see how he was taking this and he looked baffled and maybe a little worried. Will's worry wasn't just his anxiety about how his behaviour would be received. He was worried about Jem.

"This just happened," Tessa said to Jem. His behaviour was starting to make more sense.

"We very nearly had to explain ourselves to Maryse when she came to tell us that this meeting was going to happen," Jem said like it was a hilarious joke.

She turned to Will, "His emotions were suppressed for so long as a Silent Brother that sometimes a particularly strong one will roll him over. Surprises or just strong feelings can set it off. Grief will tear him to pieces or something will make him absurdly happy and he'll giggle for a day. He'll be fine."

"Am I far enough gone that I need to have my behaviour explained?" Jem asked and some of the manic energy in him settled while he looked between them. That he had managed to keep himself in check during the meeting seemed a feat.

"I would have guessed you were drunk," Will said.

"No, just emotionally unstable," Jem said and he hopped down off the table to come and stand a little closer to them. Will watched Jem with that concern he had always had when they'd been young and Jem had been ill but there was a difference to it now. There was a greater tenderness in that look. They'd always loved each other and now they were standing on the edge of changing that love completely. She watched Will's expression and Jem's laughter and realized she was wrong.

They were not at the edge of the change. They'd fallen off the edge. Will was tender and protective in the way he watched Jem. Jem's giddiness had some of the shocked, pure spun happiness he'd had on his face when she'd agreed to marry him so very long ago. She stood between them just touching this massive feeling. She wasn’t quite a part of it but she wasn’t separate from it either.

They were watching each other like people who had been in love their entire lives. Maybe they had.

She took their hands. Jem immediately linked his fingers through hers but Will was more cautious. He'd thrown his whole heart into this without looking at where it might land. He’d gone and flung himself into love with someone else he couldn’t have. Whether it was the Clave’s rules or Jem’s marriage or the fact that he was going to have to go back someday didn’t matter. Will saw all the ways he would end up alone, Will had always been able to see the ways he would end up alone. Jem was too caught up in the giddiness to see how much this could hurt.

"I thought we were complicated yesterday," she said, "Now we're just an incomprehensible tangle."

"I don't think I care," said Jem.

"That's because you're half drunk on happy thoughts," Will said.

"They're good happy thoughts," Jem said and he dropped an arm over Will's shoulder to close the little circle. Tessa worried Will would pull away but instead he shook his head and just a little of the tension in his shoulders was released. Jem had always calmed Will's more wild edges and she could see it happen more clearly now. Will saw himself as the protector but Jem was his anchor.

"You two love each other more than air. I’ve never seen a love like yours. I don’t belong here," Will said and Tessa tugged on Jem’s fingers to shut him up before he interrupted, “But there is no where else I want to be. I would not, could not, do anything that might damage what you have found and yet I keep finding myself here, on the wrong side of an unconscionable choice and yet neither of you are angry, neither of you react the way normal people would react.”

"I'm not angry, Will," she said pulling his hand in a little closer and he followed it, tightening the circle. "Surprised, I am surprised. Though watching you like this, I shouldn't be. This has always been there between the two of you. You have always loved each other. Of course you would push him over into one of his moments of happy madness. I have lived too long to believe anymore that there is a normal way to do anything. Promise me that you won’t hurt each other trying to do the proper thing. Do the right thing or if you can’t, just a good thing.”

"And what is the right thing?" Will asked in a soft voice.

“Right now, this, this is the right thing,” she said and she lay her head against his shoulder. Having them both close enough to hold on to calmed something inside her. It calmed something she hadn’t known needed calming. Jem still thrummed with manic good cheer and for a least a moment Will’s anxiety took a backseat and she felt his cheek come to rest on the top of her head. She closed her eyes and let herself forget about the rest of the world.

 


	18. Sneaking Out

Will tapped his foot against the ottoman and his finger against his book. He looked up at the clock and then back down at his hands. He had allowed himself to be drawn away to talk to with the other Arrivals about what Alison might mean. Tessa and Jem had been sent home with everyone else. Tessa had squeezed his hand and kissed his cheek before she'd left and Jem had still been giddy and not said a proper goodbye at all. Now he was alone in the damned Institute again.

"Let's leave," a Scottish accent interrupted his thoughts by giving voice to them.

"Where would we go?" Will asked Alison. She'd spun a chair around and was sitting on it backwards and looking at him. She still wore the dangerous looking boots and a tight shirt. She’d also added a large amount of makeup. It was dramatic.

"Dancing," she said, "Dancing and drinking. Someplace loud. New York is - well, was - famous for its clubs but it can't have lost all of them in the last 30 years. Let's go get drunk."

The rational part of Will's mind told him to tell her no. Leaving to go find Jem and Tessa's apartment was ill-advised and leaving to go find a tavern was far worse. But the boredom, the loneliness, and the hammering feeling in his chest that wouldn't calm was louder than his rational mind.

"I don't know where anything is in this city," he said putting his book down.

"Fuck it, we'll figure it out. We'll take a cab. The cab will drop us someplace good," she said.

"What's it like meeting yourself?" Will asked.

"I became my mother. My mother is a respected and impressive shadowhunter I suppose I should be proud but I am not her. Never wanted to be her and yet there I am, being my mother," Alison said and she stood up and kicked the chair back into place, boot flashing. She grinned at him, "What's it like meeting your ex-Silent Brother parabatai and his weirdly friendly wife?"

"Strange. Good," Will said. So someone had noticed the hand holding and the kiss on the cheek and possibly other details that Will himself wasn’t even conscious of. He wondered what counted as scandal in this day and age and whether they were approaching it.

"Well, I guess that makes you the lucky one," Alison said. She had led the way upstairs and she pushed open a door onto a room full of junk. Boxes and crates and things just tossed over odd pieces of furniture. Alison waved at it and explained, "The Lightwood kids left a bunch of their shit here when they moved out. You might be able to get into a club in that outfit since you are, in a word, very hot, but it's always better to dress the part."

Will looked into a box and found a pile of sweaters. Alison grabbed his arm and pulled him away, "No, no, no, which ever one that was had the style sense of a brick. Avoid that entire side. My guess is the one that managed to find himself a whole warlock family. He hasn't got any style now. He manages to look at that ridiculous warlock with the hair and the sparkles every day without running screaming. Definitely no style."

"Magnus may be the most powerful warlock you will ever meet," Will said. Magnus had had a bright green stripe running through his hair at the meeting that afternoon and Will had to admit that his fashion sense often ran to the ridiculous but Alison's disparaging little comments set his teeth on edge. Magnus was far more than a collection of strange hairstyles and the glitter.

"He's weird, darling, but they're all weird," Alison said. She was rummaging in a box and threw Will a black shirt that was even thinner than the clothing he was barely getting used to. She kept digging, ignoring his little comments until she'd given him a pile that she ordered him off to try on.

The pants were too tight, the shirt was too tight but the jacket fit surprisingly well. The boots he liked. They were heavy, they had a sort of careless elegance to them. Alison tilted her head to the side and slid her eyes over him in a gaze that wasn't quite comfortable but it was one he'd spent a long time learning to attract. Girls looked at him like that before he broke their hearts and offended their entire families. Most girls he had met were either shyer or more polite than Alison. She came over and untucked his shirt, getting far closer than he wanted her to be in order to do it. She undid a button and straightened the jacket for him.

"Close your eyes," she said and when Will frowned at her she said, "Looking the part matters, close your eyes. Be less boring than your Herondale counterparts in history."

"Are my Herondale counterparts boring?" Will asked doing what she said. She grabbed his chin so he couldn't recoil when she touched his eyes. He wasn't sure why he let himself lose the brief argument that ensued but he did, closing his eyes and letting her brush whatever she was brushing over them.

"Marcus Herondale is a bit of an dipshit and will follow any rule written down. If you wrote the words, "Rule 1, you must dance the funky chicken," and handed them to him, he would very seriously dance the funky chicken. His kid isn't as bad, he was a few years behind me at school. Blonde, friendly, everyone wants to bang him, one of those," she explained as he sat still and let her dress him up like a china doll. He was fairly certain he knew what 'bang him' referred to in the context. When she was done, she tugged on his jacket again and pushed his hair around a bit.

"Are you finished?" he asked, “And what does a funky chicken dance like?”

"About what you’d expect. It’s a stupid dance for stupidly drunk people,” she turned his face a little and his patience stretched a little thinner as she pronounced, “You're a little gother than I was shooting for but I think you'll make it work," then finally letting go of his chin.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Now we go get shitfaced with the mundies,” she said with a laugh.

The Institute didn’t have the staff to patrol the doors. There were magical deterrents but they were Shadowhunters and getting around it all was annoying but not difficult. Will felt a little guilty about it. The other Arrivals didn’t have the same options that they did to just get up and go and there would be hell to pay if they were caught. Alison didn’t seem to care quite as much and if he turned back at this point, she would go on without him and he had no idea how much trouble a drunk could get into in New York but he assumed it had to be at least as bad as in London where it could get you killed in the wrong part of town.

He sighed and pushed himself up to climb the side of the wall and follow her into the city.

* * *

Jem blinked at the ceiling. Tessa still lay curled up against his side and for a moment he wasn't quite sure what had woken him if it wasn't her tendency to wake up at ridiculously early hours. Then the phone rang again and he reached past her to grab it off the bedside table. She murmured and shifted in her sleep but didn't wake. He absently ran his hand over her hair while trying to figure out if the number on the screen was one that he had seen before.

"Hello?" he said before it could ring again and wake Tessa up.

"Jem?" said the voice on the other end and it took Jem a moment to place it. He had never heard it over a phone before but it didn't really matter. That fluttery happy feeling he had finally put to bed that afternoon woke up. It wasn’t the unreasonable giddiness any more but it still made his heart rate jump.

"Will, why are you calling? Is something wrong?" Jem asked. He was sitting up now. Alert just in case something bad had happened. His fingers still in Tessa’s hair.

"I went with Alison to a," he paused, "Tavern. Night club. Loud thing. I didn't think she'd be safe alone."

"And something happened," Jem said.

"No. Well, nothing unexpected. She's boiled as an owl and I haven't a clue how to use the trains or purchase the tickets or get her home," Will said.

"How did you get a phone?" Jem asked.

"I borrowed one from a girl," Will said. There was a din of talking behind him but no music. He must have stepped outside.

"I will come find you. What is the name of the club?" Jem said and wrote it down when Will told him. Tessa was still asleep and he considered waking her but she hadn't been sleeping well and waking her seemed cruel. He was fairly certain he and Will could manage to drag one drunk girl back to the Institute without too much trouble. He dug out clothing that approximated what might be expected at a club with a name like the one that Will had given him and got dressed in the hall so he wouldn't wake Tessa.

 

Jem didn't use the front door. He hadn't brought a stele and he couldn't be bothered talking his way in though he might have been able to do it. Instead, he broke in through a back door using lock picking tricks that Will had taught him decades before. Inside was loud and crowded and it took him awhile to orient himself and get a sense of Will. Once he was close enough the parabatai bond allowed him to sort out where in the jumble of humanity Will was but it still took a long time to locate him.

He was a long dark shadow beside a table where Alison sat with some new friend she had made. They were drinking something straight out of the bottle and laughing loudly. Excepting his annoyed expression, Will looked like he belonged in that chaotic environment. He was dressed for it. Dark, tight jeans, a shirt that hugged the lines of his chest in a way that made Jem pause for a just a moment before he approached them. Someone, in a conversation that Jem deeply wished he had been able to witness, had managed to get eyeliner onto Will's face. It might have been ridiculous but as part of the entire dark, angry ensemble, it worked.

"What did she tell you when she put that on you?" Jem asked coming to stand with Will. He told himself he stood that close because he wanted to be heard over the music. He spoke into Will's ear. Will had watched his approach but hadn’t moved as he’d crossed the floor to them.

"I haven't seen it," Will said, "Do I look absurd?"

"No," Jem said. "Not respectable but certainly not absurd."

"They say you used to be a Silent Brother!" Alison exploded into Jem's space and he stepped back from her. It put him even closer to Will.

"Good evening Alison," Jem said. "It's time to go home."

"Definitely a Silent Brother, no fun," she told him and then spun off into the crowd.

"This is a regular behaviour. She'll be back in a moment or two," Will told him. They still stood close and Jem felt a little thrill at the contact. The afternoon had taken touching Will from a comforting afterthought to a heart shaking thrill. Jem found himself chasing it. He kept waiting for Will to tell him to step back but it wasn't happening. That was a thrill as well.

“Do we attempt to drag her home or just let her dance herself out?” Jem asked.

“She seems happy enough,” Will said and he was leaned into Jem’s shoulder and Jem could feel each word against his ear as Will spoke, “Once I took her stele so she couldn’t glamour the bartender into giving her the entire bottle of things that are stronger and more expensive than seems wise, she hasn’t been hurting anyone.”

“Let her dance then,” Jem said. He hadn’t been in a dance club in awhile and he settled himself just a little closer to Will and looked out over the lights and music and the fantastical fashion choices. He smiled and said, “Tessa doesn’t like places like this much.”

“I can see why,” Will said.

“The fancier ones, with proper tables and music you can talk over, she likes those but these, just annoy her: too loud, too full, too many people bumping into you,” Jem said.

“You don’t agree,” Will said. He kept searching the crowd to make sure he hadn’t lost Alison but his body language had relaxed. He was less stressed just to have Jem nearby. That had always been true of Will but it hadn’t always made Jem want to pull him in closer. Not a single one of his feelings for Will felt different and yet they brought out entirely different responses in him now. One kiss and his brain had gone sideways.

“I like places like this. They’re the absolute opposite of the Silent City. They’re messy and loud and human and the music is interesting,” Jem said.

“Interesting,” Will repeated a little bit skeptical. His eyes jumped back to make sure he hadn’t lost Alison in the crowd.

“Stop worrying about everyone else for a moment. Close your eyes and just listen,” Jem stepped out in front of Will and put a hand on either of his shoulders. Will’s skeptical look deepened and then smoothed out as he closed his eyes. Jem slid his hands up to Will’s neck and could feel the speed of his pulse against his palm. He smiled. He wasn’t really listening to the music.

He looked around and then pulled Will off the wall. Will allowed himself to be drawn out into the crowd. He stayed close as he watched the crowd like he was waiting on an attack to come out of the chaos. It wasn't really chaos but Jem could remember having the same reaction the first time he'd been in a party like this. It had been one of Magnus's not a mundane one but that same disorientation he had felt was writ large on Will's face.

"It is just a party," Jem said. He was listening to the music now. Too loud and with a bass line that hammered and overpowered any hope of a melody. They wove through the crowd, not really dancing, just getting lost in the mass of people. Jem liked the feeling of being no one. Just one of the crowd. He wasn't the ex-Silent Brother here. He wasn't the novelty to be treated with distance and too much respect or too much fear. When he was noticed in a place like this, it was never recognition.

And they were being noticed.

Jem didn't so much catch the glances as he caught Will's reaction to the glances. Will noticed. Will noticed everything, he always had. It was a defense mechanism. A way to know who would need pushing away before they got too close. People looked at them. They were both so tall and between the runes on his cheeks and Will's eyeliner they weren't exactly nondescript. Jem suspected the attention would have been different if they hadn’t moved together like they did.

Will touched him more as the crowd got thicker nearer the speakers and the center of the dance floor. Will flashed a smile at someone over Jem's shoulder and he looked back to see who was there. A girl with a mass of blonde curls and a very short, very purple dress came over and gave Jem a once over. She looked him up and down and then considered him in conjunction with Will.

"Gay? That's damn disappointing," she said.

"Thank you for the phone," Will told her.

"I let you use it in the hope that you'd take me home," she said.

"Do you need help getting home?" Will asked.

"Not what she meant," Jem said into Will's ear at the same time that the girl said, "I could use a ride."

"He's very taken and it's very complicated, you do not want to get mixed up in it all," Jem told her and he took the opportunity he didn't know he'd been waiting for to slide a hand up Will's back and step in a little closer. Will gave the girl another polite smile and Jem pulled him off into the crowd again. He had no interest in new friends, not at that moment.

Now that he was close, Will stayed close. Jem found himself smiling and getting wrapped up in the little ways that Will moved in an out of his personal space. It wasn't quite dancing but it was far closer than they had been before. Will flirted with touches before he made them. A brush of a hand before it settled on his shoulder. Breath on his face before Will's cheek touched his.

The crowd was still very much there but Jem wasn't aware of them anymore. He was aware of the music and the way the changing lights picked out different details on Will's face as they flashed from blue to green and then off through a technicolour whirlwind. He noticed when something outside pulled Will's attention but his didn't follow it because Will's shirt was undone just enough to give a glimpse of collarbone. He noticed the way Will smelled and the warmth of his skin. He didn't notice much else.

Then there was a crash.

It pulled everyone's attention, even Jem's.

Alison had climbed up onto the bar and dropped a bottle off of it. Will said something that Jem couldn't translate from the Welsh but was likely swear words. The music didn't stop but people were looking. Without needing to say so, they crossed the crowd to collect her before she hurt someone or did something to hurt herself. People yelled things at her and she matched each thing called out with a epithet of her own. Jem grabbed her hand and when she tried to yank away from him, he simply pulled her off the bar. She was drunk enough that her balance was compromised and it wasn’t difficult. He didn’t need to double check that Will was where he needed to be to catch her.

"It's time to go home," Jem said to her again. She just blinked at him, a little confused. It was as good a time as any to push her out of the club even if Jem would have preferred to leave her to her own devices a little longer so he could pull Will back out into the anonymous crush of strangers and the coloured lights and the near dancing.

Out in the cool night air, they coaxed Alison into the backseat of Jem's illegally parked car. Once she was secured behind the childproof locks, Will dropped himself into the passenger seat and stared up at the ceiling. Jem looked over at him.

"She doesn't remember this, isn't that weird?" Alison said from the back seat. Her boot was up on the ceiling, "I talked to her and she doesn't remember it. She never came here. She never saw the light. It never happened to her. She never got drunk in a New York bar and spilled $400 worth of liquor on the floor. Thanks for, you know, pulling me out before I had to pay for that."

"Four hundred dollars?" Will laughed.

"That's what the bartender was hollering," Alison said and then she laughed and Jem heard her roll over so she lay across the back seat. Jem pulled out of the alley where he'd parked and out into the traffic. He hadn't had anything to drink but he was a little drunk off the energy of the crowd and this feeling that came from Will. He didn’t look across the car as he drove. It took all his attention to be sure that he was driving carefully. He didn’t think about where he was going. He was already driving towards home not the Institute.

"The other you doesn't remember?" Will said.

"Nope," Alison singsonged, "It didn't happen. Does that mean I don't go back? I mean if I don't go back then she couldn't have had the tomorrow that I should be living. So maybe I go back and just forget everything and go back to living my life all normal like. Maybe that's what's gonna happen."

Jem glanced at Will who had retreated behind one of his emotionless masks for the conversation. Will caught him looking and switched to Mandarin to say, "If nothing else, I want to remember this."

"As do I," Jem said as he swung out onto the freeway to take the long way home down the empty highway just so that Will would suck in a breath as he picked up speed. Jem wanted to hold onto these moments. He wanted to build them up, adding new ones day by day until it went from an artistic stack of memories to foundation. He wanted to make lists of things to share with Will and have him there for every one. If he couldn’t have that, he prayed that at least he’d be able to hold onto the little stack of memories. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because tiny plot hole details bother me. Here is a tiny detail that isn't a plot hole: it isn't mentioned how Will phoned Jem beyond that he borrowed the phone. He has a near-photographic memory. Tessa's number was on the screen when he and Jem were sending her text messages back in chapter 12. That's why Tessa's phone rang - not Jem's - because Tessa's number was the only one he knew. When he asked the girl how to use it, she pulled up the dial pad and told him to put in the number and it was the only number he knew to call.


	19. Simple and Good

Tessa reached for Jem when she woke and found his side of the bed empty. It was so rare that he was the one to wake up first. She shivered as she climbed out of bed. She wore pajama shorts made of soft fabric with music notes printed on them. She dropped a long sleeve shirt on over her tank top because somewhere they had left a window open the night before and the early morning air in the apartment was just a little bit chilly.

She pushed her hair out of the braid it had spent the night in and shook it loose as she padded to the kitchen to put on coffee. A tiny bit of unease was there because Jem did not wake up early and if he did he certainly didn’t do it without coffee. She talked herself out of worrying as she set the machine to make a full pot because he always drank more than one cup.

It was the sliding door in the main room that was open and she went down to shoo the cat back inside and close it. She saw them as she turned around. Jem had his head on the shoulder of a young man that it took Tessa a long moment to recognize as Will. His hair was a disheveled mass of dark curls that fell over his forehead. He wore dark jeans that fit tight and a long sleeve shirt that was made out of something that clung to the lines of his chest. Someone had managed to talk him into eyeliner. It was smudged. He was curled around Jem with his cheek against the other man’s hair.

The day before, the conversation about Will and Jem and the kiss had been about feelings and ideas. Now it was a very physical reality. Jem’s hand rested on Will’s stomach and she could very vividly imagine him using it to pull Will in. The idea of Will’s tendency towards thorough deliberate kisses meeting Jem’s unmeasured bursts of enthusiasm made her actually stop and stare.

She waited to see if jealousy raised its head. Jem had spent the night curled up with Will and some little voice in her head suggested that maybe she should be jealous about that. It was there but it was a thought not a feeling. Her mind could tell her how the stories were meant to go but her heart had always made its own choices. They were beautiful together and so peaceful it made her want to cry.

She crossed the room and touched Will’s hair. He stirred and blinked up at her. His eyes were bluer against the black of the makeup. The eyeliner had seemed silly to her but the shock of the colour against it made it beautiful. It was smudged. He was a devastated angel. Something out of a music video or a post modern play. She took her hand back.

“Shh,” she said, “You’re going to wake him up if you move.”

Will looked down at Jem and his expression was contemplative and a little confused. He looked back up at Tessa and the colour of his eyes stopped her breath again.

He started to reach for her but stopped just as she had pulled back from touching his hair. They could both touch Jem but there was something in the way of touching one another. Tessa sighed and sat down on the sofa beside him. She very pointedly leaned her shoulder against him. Not as intimate as what she had wanted to do but it was a step in the direction she wanted to go in. She would not wallow in this shyness while she had him.

"What are you doing here, dressed like that?" she asked and Will told her the story in a soft voice while her imagination filled in blanks that he left in the story. His arm was around Jem. It had been the entire time he'd been speaking and Tessa found herself fascinated by the way his fingers played absently over Jem's shoulder and arm and even up into his hair. It was effortless. His eyes followed her attention and his hand stilled. Maybe he hadn't noticed he was doing it.

She suddenly understood Jem's heart wrenching offer to leave. She understood that feeling of standing in the way of something that was important. These two were important and every time she entered a room, she made Will uncomfortable. Jem calmed him down and Tessa made him unable to sit still. She understood the urge to take the thing that was making this uncomfortable away even if it was herself. She reached out and lifted Will's free hand and held it in both of hers. She held it tight and closed her eyes. For her the decision was already made. She wasn’t going anywhere.

"It is madness that I kissed him," Will said.

"Because he's a man?" Tessa asked, "Because of me?"

"Because he's Jem," Will said, "Not that I'd ever particularly considered kissing men before this."

"I'm the wrong person to talk to if that's your problem. I've always seen the appeal of kissing Jem," she said but that wasn't quite true. She had had that same moment the day after their first kiss where it had felt like a kind of madness. She could remember finding it unbelievable that it was Jem under her hands, pressed against her, beautiful and fragile and stronger than he looked. She smiled and dropped her head against Will's shoulder where he couldn't see her face because that night still coloured her cheeks with remembered heat and a remembered shyness she didn't feel any more.

"It's not that it isn't appealing," Will said and then then smothered a sigh or a laugh. It was an embarrassed noise, like he hadn't meant to say it out loud. Tessa turned to face him. He was looking away from her and his hand, though still curved around Jem's arm, was still. She touched his face and he turned to look at her.

"Sometimes there is simply nothing to be guilty about Will," she said when the look in those dark lined, fathomless eyes finally made sense to her. Will had never in his life had a kiss he didn't regret. He expected to regret it. He expected someone to tell him he couldn't have this either. He hadn't been able to so much as kiss a girl at a party without worrying that he might bring his curse down on her. He was still too close to those days. There hadn't been one time where he'd been able to break away from a kiss and smile at the person in front of him because it had been simple and good.

Her heart shattered. She had been calm and collected and then it shattered. She held his face and leaned her forehead against his and tried very hard not to cry for him. She wanted to make him promises about how it would get better and better still but she couldn't speak in case the tears escaped.

“There is nothing to feel guilty for,” she said and then she leaned in for a very gentle, very tentative kiss that he returned with aching sweetness. She pulled away, her hands still on his cheeks and smiled at him. He smiled back, looking down, shy but happy. She kissed his nose which startled a laugh out of him. Jem shifted at the sound and they both looked at him.

“Why does no one in my life believe in sleeping in?” Jem asked looking groggy. He didn’t lift his head all the way off of Will’s chest, he just sort of turned to look up at them, “Not that you two aren’t worth waking up for but couldn’t we do this an hour from now, maybe two?”

“Get up Carstairs, I need my arm,” Will said.

“So you can kiss my wife again?” Jem asked.

Will looked a little startled and Tessa could see the conscious decision cross his face before he said, “Yes, in fact, that is what I am going to do with it.”

The whole exchange struck Tessa as hilarious. The tension, and there had been so much tension, snapped and shattered. She rolled into Will’s shoulder and laughed. Jem stretched and twisted and laid down on Will’s lap instead. He was too long for the sofa and had to toss his knees over the arm. Jem looked up at them and Will did as he had said and turned Tessa in to another kiss. Jem smiled and then closed his eyes. He truly had every intention of going back to sleep.

“Is he always like this?” Will asked Tessa.

“A little clingy? Lazy as sin?” she said. “Often, yes, he’s basically a cat shaped like a man. He likes to sleep 18 hours a day and likes to cuddle. He won’t come when he’s called but he does always come for food.”

“Shut up,” Jem said kindly without opening his eyes.

Tessa made that kissy-clicking noise people always used for cats and pet his hair. Jem attempted to frown at her but couldn’t keep the smile off his face. The actual cat scampered into the room and looked at her. She had made the noise that usually came with treats. Will looked at the cat and frowned.

“That one looks like Church,” he said.

“He is Church,” Jem said finally giving up on trying to go back to sleep. He swung back around so he was sitting up. His long legs only barely missed a lamp. He gave Will a little bit of space but Will leaned into it so they were touching again. It was subtle and had that sense of being unintentional. Tessa didn’t point it out as they settled back together. She wondered if there was something about the parabatai bond that was pulling them in.

“Your cat came through the portal?” Will asked.

“I think my cat’s immortal. We’re not really sure,” Jem said, “If you two insist on being awake, is there at least coffee?”

Alison was passed out in the spare bedroom and no one felt the need to go try and wake her. Jem had checked on her to make sure she didn’t have alcohol poisoning but then they’d retreated into a room with just the three of them. There was an easiness between them that hadn’t been there before as they made coffee and toast and sat in the kitchen to eat it.

Will touched. It struck Tessa as a sort of experimentation. He was pushing to see how far he could go and each positive response made him less anxious and more like himself. He leaned in behind her and put his chin on her shoulder to watch how the toaster worked and when she leaned back into him he made a joke about her “mechanical kitchen staff.”

He smoothed Jem’s hair and called him kitty until Jem shoved him and a little scuffle broke out. Tessa had to dance out of the way and hopped up onto the counter to avoid them. The kitchen wasn’t really big enough for three people all moving around, especially when two were trying to push each other over. She laughed and kicked at them with bare feet until they stopped.

“So who is T.C. Eliot and why did you steal his shirt?” Will asked. He sat leaned against the bright yellow kitchen wall, still wearing his black club clothes though she’d lent him enough makeup remover to get rid of the eyeliner. He spoke over the rim of a coffee cup and her heart stuttered at the familiarity of him.

She wore a shirt from a fundraiser the medical clinic Jem volunteered at had run. It had been a baseball game against some other Downworld organization and each person who had played had a shirt made with a joke name on the back. Jem still had his somewhere as well with Bro Z on it. She explained that much and he frowned at her.

“So you are T.C. Eliot?” he asked.

“It’s a play on words,” she said, “Tessa Carstairs, T.C.”

“Why Eliot?” he asked.

“I gave you all those books and I didn’t give you any T.S. Eliot?” she asked incredulous at her own oversight, “You love - you will love - T.S. Eliot. He’s an American Poet from the 20th century. Melancholic and beautiful.”

“He’s a miserable bastard,” Jem said. Will raised his eyebrows and Jem recited, “This is how the world ends, This is how the world ends, This is how the world ends, Not with a bang but a whimper.”

Tessa stared between them for a minute and then laughed. She looked at Will but he stared back at her blankly. He was missing the joke. She shook her head, “You are here the day that I win and you’re too young to appreciate it.”

"Win?" Jem asked. "Win what?”

"We had a bet," Tessa said turning the grin on him. He was trying to be serious but her smile was infectious. "Will and I, we had a bet to see who could get you to quote poetry. It had to be spontaneous. If we asked you to quote something it wouldn’t count. You had to do it on your own. God, I had forgotten it until you said that."

"You had a bet about whether or not I would quote poetry while I was a Silent Brother?" he asked. "How long did this go on?"

"Always," she said. "That, right there, that was the first time you have ever done it. There was was the great Hamlet debate of 1907 after you quoted some line at Will. We argued for weeks over whether Hamlet counted as poetry or if a play needed to go into its own category."

"You and Will had about four arguments, ever," he said. "And one of them was about me and Hamlet?"

“It was important to make the distinction but Eliot is unquestionably poetry so I win,” she said with finality.

“What do you win?” Will asked.

Tess dropped back into the open chair at the table and pulled her mug declaring that she was a Librocubicularist or one who reads in bed, over to her. She considered him. She couldn’t remember what the terms had been. The challenge had been declared unwinnable so long ago that it had really only lingered as a joke and even the joke was a hundred years old. She simply couldn’t remember and it made her feel older than she usually did.

“You tell me,” she said.

“I’ll think on it,” he told her with mock seriousness.

Alison interrupted their morning by stumbling into the kitchen looking hungover. She rubbed her face and hair with her hands and then helped herself to coffee without asking. The fourth chair at the table was pushed in against the wall so she climbed up onto the counter to drink her coffee.

“The three of you are a wee bit odd, y’know?” she said.

“I have also noticed that,” Will said, deadpan.

“I haven’t,” Tessa said and they shared a look. What she considered one of their looks. What their daughter had once called the ‘parental secrets look.’ Will’s lip quirked but he didn’t actually smile. It would have ruined the flat look he was giving Alison who looked between them and shook her head again.

When Alison went to shower, Jem disappeared from the room. He showed Tessa what he had in his hand and she nodded. He went to interrupt Will. Will was reading through Tessa’s battered copy of T.S. Eliot poems and had given her the strangest look when he found an annotation he had written on Wastelands. She shrugged and tried to be unconcerned, “I told you that you’ve read it before.”

Jem rolled his hand over and put a set of keys in it. Will turned them in his hand and then looked up at Jem. It was two keys and a little plastic card on a plain ring. Will smiled at them then he pulled Jem down and kissed him very carefully. Tessa’s imagination had provided her with this image but she wasn’t prepared for her reaction to actually seeing it.

Her stomach tightened and her heart rate stuttered. A fierce protectiveness rolled through her. They were beautiful and after every awful thing that had ever happened to them, they deserved something beautiful. It was a quick kiss. Gentle and still a little unsure, a thank you in physical form. It made Jem’s face break into a lopsided grin and Will kissed him again. An uncomplicated kiss, simple and good.

“Do you want to walk back?” Tessa asked, “Once you’ve seen the route, you’ll remember it. I can show you how to use the key card and everything.”

“Are you leaving me to drive the hungover one back to the Institute?” Jem asked.

“I don’t think she’d be willing to walk halfway across the city with us,” Tessa said and the look she gave Jem was a request. He nodded so she knew that he understood it. He looked a little disappointed.

“Ok but the two of you owe me something good,” he said.

“Next time, you can sleep on me until noon if you want to,” Will said and the look Jem gave him made Tessa blush from across the room. Will glanced at her and she laughed and bit her lip. Will looked ill at ease for the first time since he’d woken up as though realizing he was standing on the brink of something bigger than he’d expected. He relaxed faster than he had and was back to jokes and smiles almost immediately.

Tessa wanted to preserve the morning in amber and carry it with her always. She had rolled her eyes when Magnus called them her boys but sitting with them like this, she felt that possessiveness. They were hers. They belonged to themselves, they belonged to each other, and they belonged to her.  


	20. Zoya Zakarov

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter the author remembers that there is a violent villian in this story who has no problems locking 20 people in a building and setting it on fire. We don’t know what this person wants or why they created portals to pull people through time and space or how that time travel works. Here begins the process of figuring it all out. It won’t be pretty. Enjoy.
> 
> Which is to say, somewhat less fluffy than its recent predecessors.

New York on a summer afternoon smelled of metal and garbage and acrid things Will couldn’t quite identify. It was bright and busy but closed in by the tall buildings. Everything was draped in colour and light. It was all advertising. Will tried to tell himself it wasn't so different from the advertisements of London but the size and ubiquity of it all made it overwhelming. Tessa tuned it out. She ignored it. She could look across a street where every bright yellow taxicab had a sign on top and only point out the landmark on the other side. She didn't even see it. Will on the other hand read every sign and flashing lights pulled his attention because the only things he'd ever known to flash - not flicker or glow but flash - usually also had claws or dangerous magic involved.

The solution was easy. The solution was watch Tessa instead of watching the mass of humans and cars and ads. That every time she caught his attention on her she smiled and got a little closer made it all the better. He dropped his arm around her shoulder and she wrapped hers around his waist so her hand sat at his hip. Even a married couple would not walk down the street like this at home but the rules were different here. As long as those rules and this strange perfect detente held, he was going to take advantage.

Tessa's pink dress had little cap sleeves but if he let his fingers drag they could brush the skin of her arm below the line of fabric. She smelled like soap and lilac and somehow like the kitchen in her home. It wasn't a scent he could put his finger on but it made he smile and pull her in close enough that he could press a kiss to her temple. She laughed and squeezed him in a half hug. The walk had been a blur of these impossible little moments.

"So you are telling me that the proper way to eat this food is to do the exact opposite of any and all rules of etiquette?" Will asked her when they stopped about halfway to their destination and got pizza.

"Yes, New York pizza counteracts all table manners but New Yorkers get very defensive if you do it wrong," she said. They stood with their paper plates and oversized slices on the side of the street and ate with their hands. It was too hot and greasy and made a mess but she was there laughing and talking and wiping pizza sauce off the side of his face and he wasn’t sure he’d ever enjoyed a meal more.

When Will sat alone he worried about changing the past and changing the future. He worried about Jem and Tessa and Cecily as they were at home. If he couldn't get back, would they be alright? Would they mourn him as dead or search for him? Would losing the parabatai bond weaken Jem? There were people there who needed him.

He wanted to go back to them and he wanted to stay. Selfish and impossible though it was, he wanted to stay and every time Tessa smiled at him or Jem laughed he wanted to stay more. He wanted to wrap himself up in the fantasy of a life that that morning had hinted at. He wanted to wake up to the solid warmth of Jem beside him and Tessa's soft smiles. Jokes over coffee and always being able to reach out and find someone there to touch and hold. How could he go home and know that this world existed where he couldn't have it?

It was easier to blot all those worries out when they stood in front of him. Happy and healthy and as they were always meant to be. He could lose himself in loving them.

Tessa had gotten ahead of him and found a bin of battered books outside a little shop and was looking through it. He came up behind her and set his chin on her shoulder to look down at the volume in her hands. He liked the way she leaned back and let him close his arms around her when he did it. It was hot and holding on wasn't as comfortable as he wanted it to be but he stayed.

A voice interrupted his questions about the series Tessa was passing over to him while his hand lingered on her waist and he was still close enough to smell her hair.

"It isn't fair, you know?" an American voice said and Will pulled back just a little bit to look at the speaker. A warlock with green skin and dark bright eyes stood beside them looking hurt like someone had just broken her heart and stolen her candy. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a tight high ponytail that swayed when she moved in a little closer. She bobbed more than walked, like she was part bird though she seemed quite human beyond her colouring.

"Pardon me?" Tessa asked.

"It isn't fair, that you get him, it isn't fair," she said again. "I didn't mean for it. It isn't fair. I’ve been trying so hard and you get him."

"Is this because I am stunningly attractive?" Will asked.

"Who are you?" Tessa asked ignoring the comment which made Will smile. He didn’t take his eyes off of the warlock woman. She unsettling but she didn't seem threatening.

"I'm going to have to kill him and that isn't fair either. I know what it's like to lose someone important to you but it doesn't mean anything if he doesn't die. It doesn't work," she said and Will felt Tessa's body language change against his. All the softness drained out of her as she stood straighter and slowly put the book she was holding back in the box so her hands were free.

"Not my handsome face then, people don't usually want to kill you for being handsome though it has happened. I got a death threat in a bar once for being handsome," Will said.

"I could kill you too," the warlock said kindly. Her stare was intense and she leaned in as she spoke only to Tessa as though Will wasn't there, "I could kill you both and then it wouldn't be like losing him, you'd be going together and that isn't as bad. Is it? I wanted to tell you I'm sorry. You're not some mundane and you stood up to Dmitri which is pretty impressive so I thought you deserved to understand. It's important. It won't mean anything if I don't finish it. They all have to die. Do you see?"

"No, I don't understand. What will it mean?" Tessa's voice was soft and even like she was talking to an upset child. Will had a blade in his pocket and another in his boot. He was not nearly well armed enough for a battle. He stopped making comments and started scanning the area for escape routes or people sneaking up on them or anything in the vicinity that might be a better weapon than his pair of daggers.

"The spell is worthless while they're alive. Worthless. Dmitri was supposed to hold onto them so that it could be done systematically because order matters but then you got in the way. You and the little angel babies. They're cute. Really. They're cute. But it has caused problems and set back the schedule and it is going to be harder to kill everyone with them in the way," she said. She rambled in an earnest way like every word was essential as she leaned in.

"No," Tessa said.

"No?" the warlock cocked her head to the side like a startled bird and pulled back to stand straight.

"You pulled these people out of time and space, away from their families and their lives so you could murder them in a particular order?" Tessa said and there was anger in her voice though she was fighting to maintain the calm tone and not provoke an attack. Her composure cracked just a little when she said, "What the hell is important enough to do that for?"

"Love," the warlock said. "Love, can't you see that, you should be able to see that. You look at him like you love him. I've watched you. You love him. You understand that. You understand why it is important."

"You're talking about murdering people," Tessa said.

"Only because it needs to happen," she said.

"What's your name?" Tessa asked.

"Zoya," she said.

"Zakarov," Tessa added.

"Yes!" Zoya seemed pleased to be known.

During the fire, Tessa had managed to borrow power from him in some way and he felt her reaching for that connection again. It was tentative, a silent request. He still stood close to her and he leaned in just a little farther so she would feel it when he nodded. The connection caught and held. He kept one hand on her because last time she had needed touch to do make it work. His other hand was in his pocket closed over the hilt of the knife hidden there.

"You need to let us leave," Tessa said and Will was suddenly aware of why Zoya had chosen this moment to stop them. She seemed childish with her bobbing and leaning in and her fast talking earnestness but this was very carefully done. They were far from home and far from the Institute. Tessa had told him they were about halfway there when they'd stopped for pizza. There was no help that could get there fast enough to be useful. That Zoya was outnumbered obviously didn't bother her which didn’t ease Will’s worries.

"No, no, darling, no," Zoya seemed truly said when she shook her head, "You can go if you want. I don't mind. This isn't personal. It is simply necessary."

"I won't go anywhere without him," Tessa said then to Will’s surprise she pulled her phone out of her pocket. Realization rolled through him a moment later.

Zoya looked at it with her bird like head cock, "Mundies all have those. Should I get one?"

"How many friends do you have?" Tessa asked ticking away on the screen without stopping her conversation. She looked down but Zoya didn’t seem to care that she was being ignored.

"Not many," Zoya said.

"So surprised," Will put in and he was once again ignored by Zoya though he caught Tessa's lip twitch in a tiny smile. She might be looking down but he was watching.

“Then it may not be useful to you,” Tessa said. Will could see the little messages as they went. She had contacted a number of different people, flipping through the brightly coloured screens with ease, tapping out messages and then moving on.

“Do you have friends?” Zoya asked.

“Yes,” Tessa said lifting the phone, “Smile.”

She took a picture of Zoya looking puzzled and then sent that out as a message to a series of numbers. Will’s eyes flicked up and down from Zoya to the phone and then back. The magic connection hung there between them but Tessa wasn’t pulling energy from it, she just kept it open. It was the magical equivalent of his hand on the dagger. She might look relaxed as she tapped away but she was just as prepared for the fight to begin as he was.

"What are you doing with the little thing?" Zoya asked.

"Sending messages to my friends," Tessa said, "I forget about this sometimes but it's really very useful." She tucked the phone back into her pocket and then looked Zoya in the eye, "What happens next?"

What happened next was all magic and it was all invisible. Tessa grabbed his hand and tried to counter whatever force knocked them both backwards. Will caught her and kept her from falling. It left Tessa reeling and when Zoya moved in, he slashed out with the first of his weapons. A part of him was trying not to kill her because there were still so many answers. Magic crackled in the air like lightening before the storm. Will backed away, pulling Tessa with him and threw the first knife hard enough to lodge it in the warlock’s shoulder.

Between answers to his own questions and Tessa’s safety, he would happily take a lifetime of not knowing.

Will was distantly aware of running feet somewhere nearby which meant either whatever glamours were in place were failing or Tessa’s little messages had gotten through. He prayed for the latter as he got his hand on the other blade.

Zoya came in before he could look up and find out and she wasn’t slinging magic, she’d pulled the knife out of her shoulder and was using that.

Angry. Fast. Very fast. Slash and dance. In and away. Eyes flashing and the bloodied blade catching sunlight.

Knife fights were bloody and Will hadn’t been in many. One or two with mundanes in bars who were easily disarmed. She was bleeding but so was he. His arm was slashed and the wound burned but it was the type of pain that wouldn’t mean anything until the battle was over. He was aware of it but it didn’t slow him down.

Tessa pulled him sideways before the blade could catch him high in the shoulder and when Zoya wheeled on them, fire in her eyes and blood pouring from the wound in her shoulder.

He wasn’t ready to stop the next attack. He was faster but his attention was on Tessa. Tessa who got in the way by grabbing his free hand and snapping that magical connection back open. She opened it and pulled hard on Will’s energy even as Zoya got too close and that blade was still swinging. He wanted to scream at her but then she cracked the energy and the magic in the air was no longer the charge before the storm, it was lightening.

Zoya was flung backwards and Tessa fell to her knees. Head down, hair like a curtain. The traffic still moved on the street where she had landed. The mundanes still ate pizza and browsed inside the bookshop. The glamours were holding. Will started to get up to go and see if she had survived but then Tessa slipped sideways.

“Will?” she said and her voice wasn’t steady.

Panic flared.

There was too much blood. There was far far too much blood. His arm was still bleeding but it wasn’t nearly enough to account for the pool spreading around them.


	21. His to Protect

He forgot entirely about Zoya.

There was training for this but he had never had to use it. He always had a stele handy. Icy panicked calm settled over him. The feeling he associated with seeing Jem go down in a battle. He tore back her clothing to find a gash high on her stomach.J ust below her ribs. Angry torn skin and far to much blood. Deep. He held onto the calm. Folded his shirt into something like a compress. Tried to slow down the bleeding.

“Tess?” he said. He sat as close to her as he dared in case he injured her more. Though her eye lids fluttered at her name she didn’t answer. He leaned down to talk to her in a soft even voice. As calm as he could be, “It will be alright Tess. Look at me.”

“Jem?” she muttered.

“He’s not here yet, he’ll be here soon,” Will told her.

His head snapped up to look at the street. Zoya was gone. She was either still in the road or had made a run for it. In her place a blue skinned warlock with snow white hair was skidding to a stop beside them. She looked over the scene and the blood and then turned on her heel to scan the rest of the street before dropping to her knees beside Will in the pool of Tessa's blood.

"What happened?" she asked brusque and to the point.

"Do not touch her," Will said when she reached for Tessa.

"Herondale right?" she said, "Your whole family is stubborn and over-protective aren’t the? She's currently bleeding to death. I can fix that problem, you can't."

"Who are you?" Will said. His defensiveness wasn't dropping. He had no idea who this woman was. He wasn't prepared to let her touch Tessa without some sort of proof that she was on the right side. He was keyed up for a fight and his mind was still caught in the stark black and white lines of battle: us versus them.

"Catarina!" someone else answered the question and they both looked up to see Jace appear on the corner. Black and gold and moving fast, he barely slowed down to ask, "Where'd she go?"

"No idea," Catarina said. Will glanced between Jace and the blue skinned woman for just a second before sitting back. Catarina was not paying attention to Jace nor Clary who was only a few seconds behind him. They tore off towards the street in search of Zoya. Catarina took the shirt he had had in his hands and moved it away so she could poke a few times at Tessa's wound which pulled a soft hurt sound from her that almost made Will let loose a litany of threats. He reasoned himself down from it. He didn’t have any medical training and what he did have had been washed away in the panic that still hung around him.

Catarina on the other hand carried a bag and dealt with everything with sure, deft hands as though this was just another day. Will wondered what kind of medical training she had but trying to distract himself with thoughts like that didn't work. Something happed and Tessa flinched a little. His fingers were blood soaked but he ran them through her hair anyways whispering things in Welsh that he didn't want to say in front of a stranger.

"Was it a runed blade?" Catarina asked.

"Yes," Will said.

"That explains all the blood," she said and kept working. The blood had slowed but it was everywhere. Whatever Catarina was doing was working but Tessa was pale and reacted less and less. Her fingers weren't moving anymore, they lay limp on the concrete and Will gathered them up in his hand. Her skin was too cool but she was still breathing.

"Is she going to recover?" Will asked and though he had managed to bite back the angry demands that she fix it immediately the anger was there in his voice.

"She's managed to drain a lot of her energy as well as getting stabbed by a Shadowhunter weapon designed to kill things as efficiently as possible, but stomach wounds aren't usually fatal so once the bleeding is stopped, yes, she will recover," Catarina said.

Will nodded and watched as Catarina sealed the wound and added something that smelled of mint and something more acrid. Tessa flinched again and Catarina said something gentle Will didn't catch. There was no more blood seeping through the salve and though shallow, Tessa's breathing had settled to an even rhythm.

Beyond Tessa and the barrier Will’s panic had cast over his attention, things were happening. There were more people on the street now. Glamours were being drawn to push the mundanes away. Will barely noticed. He sat with Tessa. He gave short answers when asked questions managed to say thank you when someone found a blanket to cover her and handed him an extra t-shirt.

"You need to get inside," Jace said coming to sit down beside him, "If she comes back or sends something else after you, you probably won't survive it twice. No one’s that lucky, not even Herondales."

"I'm not leaving her," Will said and was surprised by how even his voice was. He hadn't managed to pull himself back from that iced over panic and probably wouldn't until she was awake but he sounded collected. Jace looked between them with a very small frown on his face. Will couldn't see himself when he looked at Jace but when he looked like that, he could see his father. He wasn't sure what it was. It might have been the shape of his face or the expression itself but Will looked up and for a moment saw Edmund and homesickness washed through him.

"You love her," Jace said.

Will considered lying but it didn't seem worth it. He nodded. Jace dropped himself down onto the pavement beside them. Will sat with Tessa's head cradled in his lap while Catarina made a telephone call about getting her moved to someplace safer. Jace sat down at Will's shoulder, facing the street with his sword still at hand.

"You aren't going to be any good for defending yourself like that," Jace said. Will felt a deep affectionate wave of gratitude for this man, this stranger who was somehow family.

Will ran his fingers over Tessa's face. He could feel Jace's attention on him but he couldn't care. "Not going to give me any advice about not falling in love with my best friend's wife?" Will asked. He hadn't had a chance to say it aloud to anyone but Tessa herself. He’d never even really said it to Jem though they both knew. Even now that everything was different he felt surprisingly grateful to have it not be a secret.

"I do not give advice about falling in love with the wrong person. I wrote the book on falling in love with the wrong person, I just got lucky," Jace said and Will couldn't see what he was looking at from that angle but he could assume it was a young woman with bright red hair.

There was a brief hostile argument wherein Will refused to leave her so she could be transported to the hospital. He was too much of a danger to be put in a hospital with other patients in the building. Truly, he was too much a danger to be allowed to stay on a street full of mundanes but he was too stubborn to leave though he did not want to bring down an attack on other people. He was about to give up arguing to stay with Tessa when Catarina came to his defense saying there was little to be done in a hospital that couldn't be done out of one.

"It won’t do to have her there either. She's as much of a target as you are," Catarina said.

"What makes you think that?" Will asked.

"Zoya tried to kill the two of you with a knife," Catarina said and it took Will a moment to understand as she continued, "Knife fights are usually personal. You go after someone with a knife if you want them hurt. Zoya was the stronger warlock. If she had used magic, she would have been able to tear through Tessa's defenses pretty quickly. You'd both be dead if the attack hadn't been physical. She attacked with stolen knife she'd pulled out of her own body. That was a terrifying sort of rage.”

Will hadn’t thought of it in quite those terms, he was still close to that panicked state but now he found himself worrying more deeply.

Catarina came along with Jace and Clary when they moved them in the back of a commandeered van driven by Simon. They weren't going home. He was surprised to realize he thought of the apartment like that. Their home perhaps but still it was the closest thing he'd had had to that word in a long time. If he could have thought of a way to guarantee that they weren’t going to bring death down on Tessa and Jem’s neighbours he might have demanded it. As he couldn’t, they were headed to the Institute. Again.

 

To Will's relief, Tessa got a room rather than a bed in the infirmary. Once she was settled Catarina left and Jace wasn't far behind her. Will settled down in a chair and stared at her and tried to settle his heart. She was better than a hundred and fifty years old and he had very nearly gotten her killed. Her blood was still on his hands and his borrowed shirt for no other reason than because he'd been there.

The curse wasn't real. The demon had said, “all those who love you will die,” but it wasn't real. It felt like he was in a precarious position of being able to make it true simply by existing in this time and this place. He could bring death down on them just by being there.

Jem appeared in the room as Will's thoughts were spiraling down into worries that he couldn't quite control. Will heard the door and leaned around the arm of the chair to look at the intruder. When he saw who it was he was up and crossing the space before he'd made the conscious decision to do so. Jem looked normal, not blood soaked or disheveled or in any other way hurt. Will chest eased just to see him.

"She's recovering, she's going to be fine," Will said.

"Are you hurt?" Jem asked catching his face between his hands. Will still wasn't quite used to Jem's touching him like this. Gentle and careful and drenched in emotion. Once they were touching he relaxed but each time Jem started it Will's heart jumped sideways.

"Me?" Will asked.

"Everyone, since I came through the door, since I phoned Jace for an explanation, everyone has promised me that she is recovering and that she is fine. No one has told me anything about you," Jem said pulling him a little closer. He was more than worried, his expression bordered on distraught. Will wondered if this was another moment of emotional instability. He stepped in a little closer so they were almost touching in the hopes that being close had the same effect on Jem. His nearness was calming and exhilarating all at once.

"I'm fine, minor injuries," Will said reaching up to take Jem's hands down and hold them in his own. Jem leaned in and pressed his forehead to Will's. They only stayed like that for a few moments before Jem was steady enough to look over his shoulder at Tessa. He crossed the room to sit down on the bed beside her and touch her hand with just his finger tips like she were made of glass.

Will told him the story as he touched her hands and smoothed her hair and started to calm. It was a little like watching the construction of a building. He watched Jem build back up all the pieces of himself around his chaotic emotions. There were other defenses he left down. This wasn't Zachariah, this wasn't even the public Jem that the Shadowhunters treated with such deference. This was calm, collected, normal Jem. Will smiled to himself as he watched him because normal wasn't quite the right adjective for James Carstairs on any day.

Jem had been driving when Tessa's messages had gone out and he hadn't gotten them until he'd stopped at a little restaurant outside the city to eat. He claimed driving helped him think and process everything that had happened in the past few days. As he'd said that he reached out to touch Will's hair as though reminding himself of the things that had happened in the past few days.

It had only been a few days. It had really only been a few days since Will had been pulled into this century. So short and yet it had changed him. He felt different. He liked it, this person he could imagine himself becoming but he didn’t quite understand it yet.

The personality-less room was exactly the same as Will's own a floor above and it could have been a room in any Institute in any century. If they'd all gone and dressed up properly, Will couldn't shake thinking of it as properly, it would have looked like it belonged Then. This room looked as it would have in 1878, the details were a little different but the heavy wood furniture was older even than that and the modern conveniences of the bathroom or the central heating were hidden away.

"Do you miss it?" Will asked and Jem looked at him but waited for him to explain his train of thought before answering. Will waved his hands, "The world as it used to be."

"Yes," Jem said. "I haven't lived in the centuries as Tessa did. I watched it from a distance. I wasn't really a part of the 1920s or the 1980s or anything else between the day I joined the Brothers and that day at the Iron Citadel. It was a little like waking into a world that felt like I'd dreamed it up. I'd imagined a world of cars and cellphones and transcontinental aircraft. I spent a lot of time imagining as Zachariah. It was a way to hold on to who I had been," he smiled just a little as he amended, "Who I would be again. I still don't always believe that this world is entirely real."

"Like if you peel back enough layers of it the regular world is beneath it, still full of horse drawn carriages and fog like soup and people dressing in proper clothing," Will said.

"Yes, like that," Jem agreed.

Will went to change so he wasn't sitting in jeans soaked in stiffening blood stains. Exhaustion swept him once he was alone. It wasn’t physical. It was like his heart was tired. He stared at the plain timeless space for a few minutes and his eye caught on the pile of books from Tessa. He chose a few options and one of Simon's comic books before going back downstairs. His emotions rattled around inside his chest like trinkets loose in a the hull of a ship. The storm was worse when he wasn’t with them.

Jem had settled in atop the blankets beside her and was just watching her sleep. She looked like she was sleeping now that her colour was back and her breathing deeper. Will paused in the doorway and Jem waved him over before he could offer to leave them alone.

"What'd you bring for story time?" Jem asked.

Will showed him titles and Jem pulled him over so he sat on the bed with them. Each time he found himself in a situation that felt like theirs he had that moment of discomfort. A sense that he did not truly belong there and someone was going to ask him to leave. Or worse, that they wished he would and were too polite to ask it of him. Jem's words about "we" being bigger than just two people came back to him and he sat down with his back against the foot board. Will stretched his legs out and rested his knee against Jem's where they crossed about halfway down. It was just a little bit of contact, the kind he'd started craving long before he'd considered how much closer it might be possible to have Jem.

Will pushed all the other worries aside and read aloud. It was a favourite habit. He had read to Jem when they were young and Jem had groaned at just about every piece of poetry until Will had started taking pride in digging up the most sentimental drivel possible. Jem would settle down and listen to a story though, provided he thought it was a good one with sufficient fight scenes and drama.

Will had, when his mental strength failed to stop them, reoccurring day dreams of curling up with Tessa so they could read aloud, passing a book back and forth and taking turns to explore a story together. As he started with the sentence, "There is one mirror in my house," and Jem added little bits of commentary as he read, he found himself expanding the fantasy. He imagined curling up with Tessa against his chest, passing the book back and forth while Jem editorialized and cuddled in as he had that morning.

He pushed worries about furious, murderous warlocks down and moved his leg so it lay over Jem's and let himself get lost in words and stories and the newly expanded sense of who "we" really meant. This was what he had to protect and he wasn’t going to be caught unprepared and improperly armed again.

 


	22. Everything is Boring

Jem didn't like the Institute. He had never really liked the London Institute but it had become home over the years. New York wasn't home and wasn't likely to ever feel like it. It was a large drafty building that reminded him of all the grandeur and coldness of the Clave. He did not like to linger but Tessa was still recovering and he didn't want to move her until she was the one to tell him that she was fine. She was still sleeping more than she was awake but she was promising him that he did not need to be at her side the entire time.

That was how he found himself here. He would have happily been at her side forever but the comment had had the air of a request for space so he'd taken his worries out of the room and found himself sitting with Will and Alison and the other Arrivals. They sat in a bedroom that belonged to one of them but it was impossible to say who. It looked exactly like every other bedroom in the place. The conversation rolled around in circles, never really covering new ground.

"So we are actually in danger," Alison said, "That's a disappointment."

"You say that you like you don't really mean it," Edith said.

"Danger isn't boring. Everything is boring here. I think I'd rather have warlocks trying to kill me in the name of love and madness than be bored," Alison said.

"That is ridiculous," Edith said.

They were a small group of six people from different corners of history and society. One of the werewolves, Edmund something, had died during the battle at the church but the others were all here in this little space. They were not particularly united but they still sat together and talked through what had happened because it affected them all. They had also been herded together which didn't happen often and they were using the time to compare notes.

Will and Jem stood together by the window, their elbows touching but with an audience they were careful that it wasn’t more than that. Jem ricocheted between a desire to tell everyone and a need to keep it a secret because this feeling was still so new and in need of protecting. The questions he could imagine following any declaration he might make were all unpleasantly unanswerable.

Alison paced. Edith sat primly in the chair and the others were scattered about. Dennis, the mundane dentist who never spoke, had pressed himself into the corner as though Zoya was about to appear at the door and attempt to hack him to pieces. When the door was flung open and a warlock did appear in the doorway he flinched but it wasn't Zoya.

"Lijing! Ni hao ma?" Jem said and the tiny woman bounded across the room and pulled him into a hug.

She was followed by Maryse who looked a little confused by the display of affection. Li was only five feet tall and had stopped aging in her teens. She was a tiny doll of a person. Her tail snapped and then curled around her feet when Jem put her back down. It was as long as she was tall, thin and scaled in red and gold. The scales went up her back all the way to her hairline and curled in lines down her arms to her wrists. Jem had only met her a handful of times but he liked her immensely.

"Who is your friend, Jian?" Li asked in accented English, looking at Will. Li spoke a dialect of Mandarin that had been born on the streets of Beijing during the Cultural Revolution and bore little resemblance to Jem's old fashioned aristocratic dialect but if she cleaned up her slang and he paid attention they could communicate in the language.

"This is William Herondale," Jem said and though he knew that she was Tessa's friend he was still surprised when she tilted her head and considered him carefully.

"Are you really?" she asked.

"If I'm not then it's too late now, they've been calling me that for years," Will said.

"She has a type, doesn't she? Tall, dark, a little bit scary and very pretty," Li said switching back to Chinese as she glanced between them with a considering look.

"He speaks Mandarin," Jem told her and she had the grace to look a little bit embarrassed about it. She flashed him a big fake smile and Will laughed. The comment was the first evidence that Jem had ever had that Tessa had told one of her warlock friends she had made later in her life about Will. She kept that life a near secret from all but those she knew very well. Clave connections could be dangerous in Downworld. He was surprised that Li qualified for the second category.

“Have you heard stories about me?” Will asked.

“Not many, you are a terrible handyman, you cannot be trusted to fix anything. You have excellent taste in gifts and you are the only person who can listen to Tessa talk about books long enough that she is the one that gets bored of it,” Lijing said settling herself on Will’s arm and starting to pull him out of the room. When no one else followed she released Will in the hall and came back in. She carried her tail up like a lemur on a branch rather than let it drag on the floor.

“Please follow me this way,” she said with a flight attendant’s smile. It was impossible to tell if it was genuine or sarcastic. Jem hurried to catch up to Will before he got trapped walking with Alison whose surliness had gotten worse after having had dinner with herself the night before. Lijing was chattering away to Will who was smiling at her like she was his brand new little sister.

“Where is Tess?” Li said stopping just before they made it to the doors. She stepped out of the way and waved the others out towards the courtyard. They were going to walk out a block or two and see if Li could pick up on any spells. Tessa might be able to track a spell she could find but Li was particularly skilled at finding them. Ideally, they needed both of them to make this work.

“She still recovering from yesterday,” Jem explained - he had assumed that someone had told Lijing the story but it must have gotten missed.

He was filling her in when they heard the first scream.

Will, only tangentially engaged in the conversation was the first to turn and run for the door. Jem wasn’t far behind him. He stepped out into the courtyard just in time to see Alison stagger and fall. Will looked back at him with blood spray on his face. Just a speckling of red. Jem stepped in close to him and yelled an order at Lijing to go back inside as he tried to find the source of the attack.

They hadn’t left the Institute grounds. Alison had still been on the steps. There was very little that could mount an attack on the warded, hallowed ground of an Institute. It took the one of the them to have survived a mundane war to realize what was happening.

“Shooters to the west,” Edith said.

Everyone was already moving in a scramble back towards the door except for Will. He cleared the steps in three long steps, moving fast and low. For a moment Jem thought he was headed for Alison who was well beyond help but it was Dennis who stood paralized at the bottom of the steps. Jem didn’t scream his name because screaming his name would distract him and they had trained together long enough that Jem knew not to interrupt his thoughts when he was in danger.

Jem was halfway down the steps to grab Dennis’s other arm when the next shots hit.

This time they came in a rain.

The surgical single shots that had brought down Alison and someone he couldn’t identify crumpled closer to the gate were over. Jem had faced swords and daggers, knives and arrows and demons which spat poison but he had never been shot at before. He knew nothing of guns or how they worked beyond the most rudimentary explanations from his training which was wildly out of date.

Something bit into his arm pain lashed out along the muscle but ignoring pain was easy. He didn’t worry until the weight in his hand changed as Dennis stopped stumbling along and suddenly needed to be dragged. As they stepped out of sunlight into the doorway, Jem caught Will’s pale blood spattered face looking back with wide eyes. Sunlight caught on his face and cast his eyes in shadow for just a moment before the door was swung shot. They eased Dennis down and Jem was relieved to see that he wasn’t dead though he was bleeding from more than one wound.

Jem’s attention settled into a near Silent Brother calm that was almost separate from who he was. He looked Will up and down to find he had a graze high on his shoulder but he was using his hand and the bleeding wasn’t profuse. He checked his own arm with just a flicker of attention. His wound was deeper, cutting through muscle and his hand was numbing. Dennis had the most serious injuries so that was what Jem focused on first.

He knew the basics of bullet wounds far better than he understood the weapons themselves. He checked where the wounds were and noted outer thigh and back without attaching more than clinical details to it. The back wound would be the more serious one but he was still breathing so Jem might still be able to do something.

There was a hand on his arm and he didn’t need to turn to know that it was Will’s. The burn of the stele made him flinch just a little. He hadn’t felt a stele since the Battle of Alicante and the flinch had less to do with the feeling than the memory of the Glass City at war. The pain started fading but it wasn’t a small wound to have a bullet pass through muscle and it would take longer than a stab wound would to heal.

The thoughts were still passing clinically as he tuned out the chaos around him and tried to figure out how he could slow the bleeding without any supplies. But the bleeding was already slowing and he sat back, his own injured arm cradled in against his chest and frowned down at the body in front of him. Too high. The bullet had entered too high and done too much damage.

He swore very softly.

Every bit of anger and fear he had over Tessa’s attack spilled up through him. Battles were one thing. Long distance executions were quite another. This was worse than what had been done to her and Will. If Will hadn’t paused to listen to what he was telling Lijing he would have been standing beside Allison and there was nothing that could have been done to stop it. Training and preparation could meet most threats but they couldn’t touch this.

It was a sort of helpless fear.

He looked for Will and his attention pulled Will’s gaze around to him. Deep blue and utterly familiar. Those eyes had become familiar again so fast. Jem didn’t need to as for him. Will came over and grabbed his good arm and pulled him up and away from the blood pool and sat down with him against the wall. Shoulder to shoulder. Jem couldn’t quiet the fear and the rage but with Will beside him he could bottle it tightly enough to keep from doing or saying something inappropriate.

“Can you even ward against bullets?” Lijing asked. Jem looked up. She sat across from them looking stunned with her feet straight out in front of her and her tail coiled like a chameleon’s beside her.

“Yes,” Jem said. He sounded like Zachariah. Sometimes he caught himself having thoughts like this, that Zachariah was a separate person from himself. He heard the words come out of his mouth as though spoken at a distance by someone else, “The European and most Asian Institutes all have warding that can deter bombing but perhaps it only works on the building and not the space around it or perhaps it was just never done to the American Institutes since America hasn’t ever had a mundane war on its own soil like that.”

Jem’s voice barely wavered but Will noticed and changed his body language, leaning in a little closer. Less like friends, more like lovers and Jem wanted him closer still. Will hadn’t just been caught in the shoulder, his trouser leg was rolled up and an iratze drawn on his calf where a partially closed wound was still surrounded by slowly drying blood.

The rage spiked again and Jem closed his eyes and fought it back down with good peaceful memories.

“This place can’t be stormed right? They can’t kick down doors and get in?” Lijing was still worried and Jem glanced at the door because that was where she was looking. He shook his head. That much he was sure of. Unless Zoya had hired Shadowhunters, there was no one capable of forcing open Institute doors.

Jem didn’t feel as safe as he wanted to. 


	23. Washing It Away

In the aftermath of the shooting the hallway became a makeshift hospital. Jem and Edith had taken on the task of bandaging up those who had made it back inside. The body of the man Jem had tried to save still lay on the floor by the wall, abandoned in the chaos. In a flurry, Silent Brothers had been sent for and people dispatched to search for the shooters.

Amid all the activity, Will was left a useless adjunct to everyone else. He tried to help but he didn’t know what he was doing. He kept having to shuffle back against walls to get out of the way of other people. But to back away completely and stop helping meant sitting still and that opened the door to thinking about Alison. She still lay on the steps beyond the door.

She was dead.

To keep himself from think about that he did whatever he could. He was the one who found out where the linen closet was when Edith demanded towels. He was the one who held people in place while Jem did something that hurt them. Every once and awhile Jem's eyes would come up from what he was doing and he'd only go back to it once he'd found him.

It left Will feeling seen which was a strange sensation. He had never been one to be ignored. He'd never felt unseen or unnoticed but he'd also never had anyone look at him like that. No one looked at him like his presence was essential if the world was to continue to turn.

When the Silent Brothers arrived Jem turned over the impromptu little hospital to them and backed away. They drifted in, moving like bone shadows with hollowed out faces. Will tried to imagine Jem's mouth sealed shut and his eyes caving in as though there was nothing below them. He tried to imagine Jem's voice whispering through his head instead of into his ear. Even in a room full of blood and death that was a painful thought.

Jem was explaining something to one of the brothers about the patient with the wound in her upper shoulder when he looked up and found Will again. He whispered something that must have been an apology or maybe a last detail and then he cross the blood streaked floor to Will.

Will held a hand out and then let it drop. He didn't know if he was allowed to touch Jem with an audience like this. Even if their attention was all on other things, there were too many people in the room. He kept his hands to himself as he turned and Jem followed him silently back to his room. They might have gone to Tessa's but barging in there blood soaked and upset while she was still recovering herself seemed like a type of cruelty.

Inside the door he turned around and touched Jem's arm first. The wound was gone, the iratze faded, nothing but the torn fabric and a faint white scar to show there had ever been anything there at all. Then he ran his fingers over Jem's cheeks and the runes there. The evidence of his time as something other than human etched on his face. There were runes on his fingers too and Will ran his hands over them next.

Jem was silent as he did it but he was softer than he had been out where all the other people were. He leaned in, close and warm and alive and the idea of him as one of those breathing statues made Will's chest hurt. Jem was too bright, even dying he had been too alive to possibly be like that. He had given up his personality and his music and his infinite capacity to love for more than a century.

"That's long over," Jem said in answer to the words Will couldn't force himself to say.

"It hasn't happened yet," Will said.

"I'm right here," Jem said cupping Will's face and turning him so he could look him in the eye. The runes drew his attention for another moment but then he let himself get lost in Jem's eyes. He leaned in so they were forehead to forehead. Neither of them mentioned how close they had come to dying but Jem held him near enough that they were breathing the same air. It made Will sure he was thinking the same thoughts.

"Come here," Will said. He pulled Jem into the bathroom and sat him on the edge of the bathtub. Jem watched him with a little smile on his lips as he wet a towel and sat down on the lid of the toilet to try and wipe the worst of the blood off his face. Jem let him fuss without protest but he took his free hand and played with it in both of his. Will stopped to pull him in close.

“I won’t lose you,” Will said.

“Right here,” Jem repeated.

They were still in the silent room for a long time. It was comforting to have him there against his chest. He remembered Tessa telling him they were dreaming when she had curled herself into his arms like this. That had been the night he'd gone to Magnus to have the curse broken. It had been just a little bit dreamlike but this wasn't. This was half dried blood smeared on bright white tile and Jem's breathing a little uneven against his neck.

The little things that Will was learning about Jem made him falling in love with him seem a forgone conclusion. His need for physical reassurance. His ability to command a room of Silent Brothers. His eyes. Even things Will had always known made loving him inevitable. It has always been inevitable. His kindness. His strength. His gentle hands.

Was it possible to avoid falling in love with someone who looked at you like you were the only thing that could keep them from losing their mind? Someone who settled into you like you were simply two pieces of the same whole and always meant to have been together?

"I need to shower," Jem said pulling back.

"Of course, you can use this one if you want, I'll go after," Will said and released him. Jem gave him an incomprehensible look. Will gave him a blank stare in return until he could make sense of it. He tensed because he wasn't sure what it meant. It was an invitation but beyond that, he wasn't sure what Jem was offering. Jem dropped the look and smiled. He cupped the back of Will's neck and pulled him in to kiss his cheek.

"Don't worry about it," Jem said.

"Maybe I want to," Will said.

"Nobody wants to worry," Jem said with a little laugh. The moment was gone. Jem's body language had all changed and the look in his eyes was gone. Will couldn’t pick out the individual changes only the sense that Jem was letting it go.

"What did you want?" Will asked grabbing his hand and pulling him back before he could stand up and go anywhere. Jem looked at Will's hand wrapped around his wrist and an echo of that look came back. Will didn't let go. Jem's arm was bloody well past the wrist, like a stain. The pattern on his family ring was almost obscured by the smears. Will looked up from his hand because if he was going to be demanding rather than letting the moment go, he wasn't going to be bashful about it.

Jem didn't answer immediately but he smiled again and it was that same invitation just spoken with a different dialect of body language. Will had no idea how you went about learning this language but he could see it in Jem and Tessa and wanted to be a part of the conversation. Jem tugged back on Will's hand and Will stood.

Will's eyes were shut and Jem's fingers were on his face when he managed to collect himself enough to say, "I could stay. This century is so wasteful. Showers use far too much water for one person."

Jem laughed. The sound was bright and startled and happy.

"If you get in there, I will touch you," Jem's voice wasn't quite steady. It snapped Will's eyes open because he expected Jem to be as calm and collected and confident in this as he was in everything else.

"I find I enjoy that," Will said. He was bolder for having found this little crack in Jem's practiced calm. He stepped closer and had let go of Jem's arm in favour of touching his waist. Will's entire experience of touching the bodies of other people like this involved women fully dressed in corsets and heavy dresses. He paused in his attempts to talk Jem into crossing a line he didn't quite understand to run his hands up the line of his body.

Jem wore thin cotton that didn't keep the warmth of him from Will's palms and his shape was different from a girl’s. Will's hands had found their way to the small of his back and up the contours of the muscles on his way to his shoulders. Jem was quiet but responded by pulling Will in and wrapping his arms around him in a hug that was brotherly and comforting. It was at least until Will started tracing his fingers back down and Jem pressed his body closer.

"Am I taking advantage?" Jem asked in that unsteady voice that made Will's stomach warm.

"Am I?" Will said. When Jem had pressed his hips in, Will had grabbed on and was holding onto him. Jem's hips were narrow and sharp beneath Will's hands but strong. Jem, this Jem, had erased all Will's fears of his fragility. This Jem didn't need Will to worry about him. Will still did and suspected he always would but he could feel the strength and it eased the worst of his concerns.

Jem pulled back enough to look him in the eye while Will kept their lower bodies held tightly together. Will didn't know what look was on his own face but he felt everything he saw on Jem's. Warmth and confusion and a shimmering kind of anticipation.

Jem slid his hands from Will's shoulders down to the buttons on the shirt he wore and undid one before he paused and met Will's eyes. There was a question in that expression.

"Yes," Will answered it before he leaned in for a kiss.

It was still so new. Every kiss was unlike the one before it and every kiss made Will's heart rate take off like it was trying to run for its life. This kiss was gentle and tentative but Will had to remind himself to breathe. Jem's mouth was on his as he undid the buttons one by one and his fingers brushed Will's skin underneath. His fingers were careful and insistent as he pushed the shirt away and let it drop to the ground. 

Jem gasped as Will slid his hands up under his shirt but even still the kiss didn’t break apart. Jem was warm, almost feverish and his skin was silk smooth even where it was broken by scar tissue. Will's hands found his ribs and was reminded how thin he was even healthy. Beneath the layers of taut skin and muscle, Will could feel the bones.

The kiss broke when Will's hands had pushed the shirt as high as it could go without coming off. Jem was obliging but let him be the one to pull it away. Will paused to run his fingers down Jem's stomach and decided that he liked the lines of those muscles. They tightened and released under his fingers.

Jem smiled at him and leaned past him to turn the water on and his bare shoulder touched Will's and Will almost lost his ability to think at all. That sense that he was well out of his depth came back.

"Will you forgive me for being a bumbling idiot?" Jem asked looking apologetic. It was the most baffling sentence he had heard in a long time.

"You aren't. I don't think you've ever bumbled anything in your life. If you were, I would," Will said. "I'm the bumbling one, I promise you. I haven't any experience with any of this."

Jem smiled and leaned in to kiss him again. They were close and the sound of the rushing water had erased the last little reminders of the world beyond them. The traffic noise was gone. The distant sound of voices were gone. There was just water and this person in front of him and that was all he needed. If Jem was nervous too it gave him permission to let the anxiety that he would do something wrong go.

He hooked his fingers into Jem's waistband and pulled him in closer with a little jerk and that startled another one of those bright laughs out of him. Jem’s laughter was something he hoped he would have years to explore. Will fumbled with his belt and Jem leaned in to kiss his way down Will's neck and that made the fumbling worse.

They managed it.

They left the ruined, blood stained clothing in a heap and stumbled into the shower. Will was embarrassed and self-conscious until the water hit him and cleared his head. He stood in the spray and Jem stood in front of him and there was humour in his eyes. Will pushed up the wet hair the water had dropped into his eyes with both hands. Jem grinned and, thinking he was being mocked for something, Will flung some of the spray at him.

“You’re kind of beautiful,” Jem said.

“I am radiant. It is good of you to finally notice,” Will said and Jem flicked water into his eyes with another laugh.

The water around their feet swirled pink as the blood was washed away. Will reached for soap and washed Jem's hands clean. Washing the mess out of the hair on his arms and scrubbing between his fingers was a methodical and intimate thing. Will pulled his ring off and left it with his own on the floor outside the tub so it wouldn't get washed away down the drain. Jem had a small smile on his lips throughout the entire process.

Once his hands were released, Jem ran his fingers through Will's hair and washed it. Will got closer as he did it. He'd been shy before but that was swirling down the drain with everything else. Touches he'd never considered before thrilled him. Jem's thigh brushed his when he leaned in to push Will's head back and rinse away the soap from his hair. It was electric and under the spray of the shower the electricity jumped and bounced between them like a lightening strike.

Will shook water out of his eyes and his hands had pulled Jem's hips in again. It put parts of himself that other people didn't touch up against warm wet skin and he shivered to his toes. It reminded him that for all his inexperience, his body knew what it wanted. Jem's mouth was against his neck again. The kisses were insistent with little grazes of teeth and fragments of pressure that Will felt in lower places.

He let his hands wander until he paused with his palm against Jem's stomach. He was tense and shuddered a little at the touch. Will's hand was low enough that his finger tips brushed curls of hair. Jem leaned into his hand and tucked against his face in against Will's chest. He nodded and muttered something in Chinese that Will missed most of but included the word for love and ended with, "I don't want you to stop."

The water pounded against his back and Jem couldn't seem to keep his mouth off of his skin. He licked at the water spray where it beaded on Will's shoulder and he nibbled on his collar bone.

Will's hand explored and Jem tensed and relaxed and tensed again as he did. Jem pushed against him when he liked something and whispered little suggestions when he didn’t. He was hard when Will started and got harder as Will wrapped his hand around the length and started to stroke.

Will ran one hand through Jem's tangle of wet hair while the other kept going slowly until Jem let out a frustrated groan against his neck. He sped up the motion of his hand. There were things he liked when he did this alone that he'd never considered doing to someone else. He circled his thumb around the underside and Jem groaned and pressed himself into Will.

Jem’s body changed as Will pressed a little harder and rubbed a little faster. Jem gasped and Will steadied them both against the wall until Jem's orgasm was over. The feel of him in Will's hand changed. The mess had gotten all over his stomach and his thigh but the water was already washing it away.

Jem looked up with hazy eyes and a smile and kissed Will before his hands slid down. Will was momentarily unsure of what to do with his own while both of Jem's were touching him. Rivers of water ran down Jem's shoulders so he traced those. Jem was smiling and watching him and it made him shy. It was not the hand massaging, nor the one stroking that made him blush. It was the way Jem watched him like he was trying to memorize his expressions.

Will was very good at expressions. They were controlled and maintained to present the image he wanted to present. At that moment though, his expressions were a secondary function of Jem's fingers. His eyes fell shut when the pressure increased, his mouth dropped open if Jem touched him in the right place. The right place kept changing and Jem kept finding it over and over.

He teased and stroked. Will didn't think it should have been so unlike any of the times he had done this to himself but it was. It was the difference between candle flames and bonfires. This was not hurried or guilty. This was slow and sumptuous. Between the water and Jem’s skin under his hands the sensations were all broader than he had ever imagined.

Jem's chest brushing against his wasn’t a part of what his hands were doing but every piece of them was connected. Every touch was a part of every other one. Will let himself get lost in it. He stopped worrying about the look on his face and the potential for embarrassment or about whether he was bumbling and childish. He was sensation and skin and water and not entirely his own anymore. He handed himself over to Jem in body and soul. Trust was a blade at your throat but Will was glad of it.

Release hit hard and Will wasn't expecting it. He gasped and Jem kept going a moment too long and the wave of pleasure crested until it almost hurt. Will shuddered and Jem gathered him in close and held him while his body calmed. Will's eyes fluttered shut and he took a turn to be the one who pressed his face in against skin in search of physical comfort.

When they finally made it out of the water. They were clean and the hot water and all the touching left Will feeling relaxed. He had to hold other thoughts out to maintain that feeling. As long he didn’t think too hard about the rest of the world he could drift.

They dressed out of Will’s closet and went upstairs. Tessa was still asleep and Will stood in the doorway and looked at her for a long time as Jem crossed the room to touch her hair. Will watched as she sat up and smiled at Jem, still half asleep. Will closed the door and locked it because he wanted the rest of the world with its bloodstains and threats and dangers to stay away.

He sat down on Tessa’s other side and she reached out a hand to him. He took it. She wasn’t a tiny person but her hands were smaller than Jem’s and Will smiled at it as he held it between his.

“Can I sleep here?” he asked her.

“Of course you can,” she said. “What’s happened?”

“There was another attack. I’ll tell you about it later,” Jem said. “Will and I spent most of the last hour in the shower pretending it didn’t happen.”

Tessa looked between them, suddenly more awake. She raised her eyebrows just a fraction at Will and he smiled and dropped his eyes. It hadn't felt indecent until he needed to explain it to her. 

“If you two keep leaving me alone in bed while you’re off making out in dance clubs and showers, I’ll get jealous,” she said and while it was said with a smile, there was something in it that made Will take notice.

“I’ve known you for months,” Will said turning her face to him and sliding a little closer so he could wrap an arm around her. She settled into him and waited for him to continue, “I love you more every day. From the day I first told you that I loved you, that love has grown. Jem has had centuries for his own feelings to grow.”

“You are my heart,” Jem said to her, “I left it with you when I joined the Brothers and you’ve never given it back.”

Tessa laughed and cuddled into Will a little tighter. With Jem on her other side, they settled back against the headboard. Jem’s arm wrapped around Tessa and his hand settled at the back of Will’s neck. A tangle, Tessa had called them before and Will hadn’t thought that being tangled could be this good.

“I’m going to tell you I’m jealous more often,” Tessa said into the side of Jem’s face as they both smiled.

Will took one of Jem’s hands and laced them together. He put their little knot of fingers on Tessa’s stomach. He didn’t notice it until she was running her fingers over theirs but they’d picked up the wrong rings when they’d gotten dressed. The imprint of birds was on Jem’s hands and the pattern of castle crenelations was on his.

 

 


	24. Nesting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (gratuitous sex)

Tessa woke up to the play of fingers on her arm and tried to roll into the hand but she was held in place. Even with the dissonance of being held down, waking up was slow. He was playing with her hair now, gently like he didn't want to disturb her but the arm around her waist that made sitting up impossible wasn't his. It might have been alarming. She had never woken up wrapped up in two different people but she knew exactly who they were and it made all the difference.

It wasn’t quite graceful but she managed to wriggle around so she could face Will. He smiled and the rush of treasured memories that went with Will sleepy eyed and smiling rolled over her. Behind her, still asleep, Jem pulled her back into place so she could feel him up and down the length of her body. He held on and pressed his cheek to her shoulder. Even as she reached out to touch Will's hair, she cuddled back against him because she knew he found it reassuring even as he slept.

"I could get used to living like this," Will said to her. "End a day like that, begin the next one like this."

"Me too," Tessa said.

He shifted closer to her in the nest of blankets and cupped her face in his hands. She was smiling before he made it to the kiss. He hadn't been the one to kiss her yet and she melted into this one. It had all the thrill of a first kiss with none of the anxiety. It was slow and sleepy and she let him keep it that way. She teased his mouth open but let him decide how hard it was and how fast it happened. He was clumsy with his tongue but such a fast learner that it was barely worth noting.

He kissed her deeper and she wrapped her arms around his neck to hold him near. She couldn't follow him if he pulled back because Jem still held onto her and she wanted him right where he was. Will wasn't a tease and he had no interest in moving away. His body kept pushing closer and he hooked a knee over her leg. In attaching himself to her in the night, Jem had done the same thing from the other side. Will adjusted so he was wrapped around both of them. Tessa was left pinned but barely noticed because Will was getting more adventurous with his hands.

"Am I too forward?" he asked before sliding his hand off her shoulder.

"Absolutely not," she said nuzzling his cheek.

He touched her breast and when he caught her smile he squeezed just a little. She pushed into his hand and murmured something inarticulate but happy in his ear. He chuckled and did it again. He was all smiles as she murmured his name.

It was strange to know more about him than he did. He had always loved gasps and moans. The sounds she made could pull stronger reactions from him than touches could. There was a place for words but words when he was like this were better saved and measured. His hand tightened and she didn't hold back the sigh it pulled from her.

He explored. His hands caressed and squeezed and would have slid lower down her stomach if Jem's arm weren't still latched around it. Will got distracted by that and his hand ran up Jem's arm to his shoulder. Jem muttered and Tessa felt him shift as he started to wake up.

It made her realize she was held between two people. That should not have been a surprise. She had laid down here, she had felt Jem around her while she had been kissing Will but it was more real when he was awake. Her heart rate picked up and it wasn't fear though it almost felt like it.

Jem shifted again and she felt him attempt to stretch out his legs but they were so tangled in hers and weighed down by the addition of Will's that all he could do was struggle. Rather than say anything he fell still and kissed the back of her neck. She leaned her head to the side and gave him all the access to her throat that he might want.

"Good morning," she said.

"Hello," he said into her neck.

Will's face was still right in front of her so she leaned up and kissed him again. His lips were flushed and hers felt swollen. He kissed her harder than he had before and she could feel that he was reaching past her and touching Jem though she wasn't sure where or how. There was some jumbled shifting as they untangled their legs and Tessa was a little disappointed by the amount of space it opened up.

Will held her jaw in one hand and kissed her deeply and Jem's hands were on her leg, running down from her hip and then turning and sliding back up the inside of her thigh. Even with the flannel pajamas she wore the contact was electric. She shifted into it and let him push her knees wide.

"How far are we going this morning?" Jem asked with his palm against the inside of her thigh, almost at the very top. Tessa pulled back from Will and he let her go without really giving her any more space. She looked at Jem and then kissed him. In that moment, she was more sure of that as a language than she was of words.

"Tess?" he said and she pulled away from Will to roll into him.

These conversations were not embarrassing but something about having Will there made her shy of them. It took her a moment to realize why. There were things she did with Jem that she and Will would never have done. In some cases it was because it had never occurred to them, in others it was simply a matter of different tastes. It was unnerving to have to consider them at the same time. More than any other moment since his arrival, it made Tessa conscious of the way her two lives were winding together.

"Touch me," she said into Jem's chest. Will was the one who did as she asked with tentative fingers like he was afraid he had hurt her or scared her. His hand was on her back so she reached behind her and grabbed it. She pulled it in so she could cradle it against her chest. Once he settled close to her, she kept speaking, "I don't want more than that, not yet. It's all still too new and confused in my head."

In rolling over, she had dislodged Jem's hand from her thigh but he slid it back into place and then all the way up to pull a gasp out of her. The strength of her response to even that much touch surprised her, she hadn't realized how aroused she was. Her body didn’t care that it was new and confused and needed time to sort out. Some corner of her mind was just as ready to do anything either of them wanted but the rest of her wasn't.

She needed time to understand how her feelings for Will fit around the person he was and not the person she remembered. She needed time to make sense of having both of them there and how to manage warm, demanding hands everywhere she turned. She needed time to adjust to the distractions of another person and how to balance wants and needs. She needed to be sure that Jem was a comfortable as he seemed. She needed it to go slow.

"Do you want the release?" Jem asked.

He'd laid her out on her back as she'd been trying to quiet the rush of thoughts. Will was touching her breasts again. She needed slow but there was such a thing as too slow.

"Yes, please," she said and she'd intended it to be flippant but Will caught her nipple at the wrong time and her voice came out breathy and desperate. Jem laughed and it was a soft dark sound meant only for bedrooms.

She pulled her shirt off and tossed it away. She looked up at Will who was a little indecisive about what he had been doing now that he was touching skin. It only lasted a moment before his hand was back in place, stroking and exploring. He was gentler now and he watched her. His hand was cupped around her breast, his thumb was testing to see how much he had to rub to make her nipple harden but his eyes were on her face. Dark blue eyes trained on hers and she couldn't look away.  
  
"What do you want?" she asked him.

"Being here with you is better than anything I'd ever thought to want," he said.

His thumb and forefinger were rolling her nipple right up to the edge between pleasure and pain and warmth kept curling up in her stomach with each movement. It was the focus of all her attention until Jem hooked his fingers into her waist band and very slowly pulled the last of her clothing away. Once she was naked he lay against her side and pressed a kiss to her shoulder.

"Less clothing," she said as Will's hand started running down her body. She tugged at his shirt with clumsy fingers. Will almost never denied her what she wanted and once she had his bare chest to lean into she relaxed. It was Will who reached over and demanded that Jem take his off as well.

Her fingers were clumsy when she tried to help and she kept getting distracted and just watching. There were different kinds of arousal and this kind left her needy and almost helpless. She could have snapped herself out of it if she'd tried but she liked the feeling of giving herself over and narrowing her reactions down to sensations. It was the act of putting herself into someone else's hands and then stepping back and watching what happened.

“I trust you,” she said with her mouth against Will’s collar bone but she meant it as a blanket statement.

She was cradled between them and when Jem pulled her knees wide. She inhaled and settled into place so that one knee was thrown over his so she didn't have to lose the closeness while allowing him to touch her. In a flash of neediness that roiled in her stomach she leaned over and pulled Jem into a kiss. He kissed her deeply and someone's hand made it down between her spread thighs.

It wasn't Jem.

She was expecting Jem. The person kissing you should have been the one with his hands in intimate places but he wasn't as intentioned as Jem usually was. He was curious and uneven. Pressure here, glancing touches there, pressing folds back but not knowing how to make something of it.

She remembered this.

She broke the kiss with Jem and pulled Will in. Kissing him distracted him farther but she didn't care. The sense memory was so vivid. This was Will on their wedding night, careful and curious and trying so hard not to hurt her. She could smell the room - wood smoke and lilac because they'd been married in spring and one of the maids had filled a vase by the bed with purple flowers. It was a flashback that was all bliss and nerves and comfort.

Jem's hand was on her hip and his lips were on her shoulder. He nibbled just hard enough that she felt the graze of teeth and it pulled her out of that past moment and back into the present. Will hit the right place and her head fell back in appreciation. Frustration followed a moment later as he moved on too fast. She twisted a little bit but Jem caught her hip so she had to stay where Will wanted her.

“No choosing sides,” she said.

“I’m not,” Jem said but he held her a little tighter.

“There are no sides,” Will said.

One look at Jem told her that he had been thinking the exact opposite of that. Her imagination followed him to all those places. Jem flashed her a quick look that spoke of ganging up on Will until he was incoherent or maybe of alliances against her that would push her well beyond the things he could already do to her. There were going to be days where sides were chosen and the very thought thrilled through her.

Jem left her to her imagination and quirked a smile at Will before he pulled him into a kiss. His fingers short circuited again and she forgot her attempts to try and twist her hips against his hand. She just watched them. She lifted her head and pressed a lingering kiss to Will's jaw so she could feel him move as well as see them.

If she'd had concerns about getting distracted by the other person, this erased the last of them. The two of them were completely distracted from what they had been doing to her but she didn't care. Jem held Will's lip between his teeth for a moment after the kiss broke apart. Will looked dazed and starstruck as Jem pulled Tessa in for the next kiss.

He dropped his head a moment later so he shared her pillow and started nuzzling her neck. She reached up and found the marks he'd left on Will during whatever they had done the afternoon before. She trailed her fingers over the purpling mark low on his throat and wondered if he had noticed it yet. Tessa was an expert at the little healing spells that cleared them away because Jem loved to leave them in trails over her skin. Rather than fixing Will’s she put her mouth a little higher and gave him another one.

Jem's mouth was on her hammering pulse when he pulled a cry out of her by finding the places that Will kept missing and rubbing hard. He pulled Will along, guiding him and pushing him when he was too gentle. He was often too gentle.

“You’re not hurting me,” Tessa said in response to some lesson of Jem’s that left her gasping and Will shying away. It had taken a long time when they'd been young to figure out how much Tessa could enjoy before it hurt. Everything she had done with Jem since had far eclipsed those old boundaries.

Jem turned her body into a classroom and it was thrilling on its own. Will and Jem had never used as many words as other people when they communicated. To be wrapped in the middle of that was like being a part of something bigger and deeper than she'd ever felt with either of them alone.

They were individuals. Complete and distinct.

And yet, they were also something different together.

Jem still had his mouth against her neck and had pushed up to that line where it almost hurt. He nuzzled and sucked and nipped at her skin. She had leaned her head away so he could do anything he wanted. Will was there to cradle her head in the crook of her arm and when she opened her eyes, she could see him run his fingers through Jem’s hair.

Different together. Beautiful together.

“Oh,” escaped from her as someone slipped fingers inside her. She rocked her hips against him and as Will shifted to make space for her, she felt him against her thigh. He was hard enough that it must be uncomfortable. She reached for him and slid her hand down into his pants. He tensed and jumped a little bit. It had been his fingers inside her. She blinked her thoughts clear to start to apologize but his voice was already there, in her ear as his fingers slid back into her body.

“Please don’t stop,” he said.

Tessa tried to come up with a response but Will was far better at this than what he had been trying to do before and she couldn’t think about anything else. Jem was helping just enough to push her up to the edge but not enough to push her over it. Will leaned in against her hand even though it wasn’t doing much but cradling him while she tried to hold herself together.

The phone rang.

Tessa gasped at the interruption as it pulled her out of the world of touch and sensation that had enveloped her so completely. She must have looked startled because Jem laughed at her and kissed the end of her nose as he reached for the phone.

“No, pretend you didn’t hear it,” she said.  
  
“Five people have this number and none of them call to chat,” Jem said.

“I know,” Tessa said. Will’s hand was against her body and she rubbed herself against it for a moment before she realized what she was doing and stilled. He inhaled and then pushed against her and circled is palm against her. Tessa wanted to relax into it and fall over the edge that was right there but Jem retrieved the phone.

“Throw it away, James,” she said in a breathy voice.

“Catarina,” he said holding it up.

“Fuck,” she said and pulled away from Will’s hand. “See, now that I know that I need to answer it. She never calls for anything.”

Jem handed her the phone and she answered it with, “Yes?”

“Did I wake you up?” Catarina asked.

“Not quite,” Tessa said.

“Which one?” Catarina asked.

“Very funny,” Tessa said.

“No really, which one?” Catarina asked.

“Yes,” Tessa said, unsure if anyone else could hear Cat on the other end of the phone. She was silent a moment and then made a little noise that was somewhere between shocked, disapproving and impressed.

“I know how that Zoya person is powering her portals,” Catarina said, letting the more scandalous aspects of the conversation go. Tessa could picture her looking mortified to have asked.

“How?” Tessa asked. She had sat up and Will was still nearly wrapped around her. She leaned into him. She didn't really care about Zoya.

“There’s a nest in the Bronx,” Cat said, “I’ve already called Jace and Clary. They’re on their way down to start sweeping it. Can you get there in the next two hours?”

“Yes,” Tessa said. She waited until she’d disconnected the call before she let loose a torrent of swearing that made Will pull back and look at her with raised eyebrows. She was naked and half drunk on all the touching and it was being blow away by this piece of news.   
  
“What is it?” Jem asked.

“Nest in the Bronx,” she said.

“Shit,” Jem said.

“Not a nest of fuzzy ducklings then,” Will said.

“No,” Tessa said.

She needed to be fully dressed before she explained a Barunka nest. She started to get up and Jem, caught her and pulled her back into his arms. She tucked herself in tight. Her mind was running a mile a minute but her body still craved touch. Will hesitated and both she and Jem reached for him at the same time. He joined the little knot and Tessa tried to absorb enough comfort to get her through the day that was now staring down at her.

“You’ll feel better,” Jem said into her ear.

“I’m too upset now,” she said.

“That sounds like a challenge,” he said.

She looked at him and considered walking away from that particular comment. She was already thinking about whether it would be faster to take a train or a car. They couldn't portal in because none of them had ever been there. Jem met her eyes with a bedroom smile and she let the thoughts go. Maybe she wasn't too upset to fall back into that look. 

“We’ve got fifteen minutes, because I need to shower before I go across town to-” Jem put a hand up over her mouth because no one wanted to hear the end of that sentence. She smiled under his palm. Then she pulled away and lay back down in the middle of the bed. Will resettled beside her but Jem lay down on his stomach between her legs. She bit her lip because just the way he looked at her like that was enough to make her heart rate jump.

Will had questions on his face but she had started something before with him and it wasn’t finished. Even with the distraction of the phone, he was close enough that wetting and sliding her hand back into place made him grown. The way he looked at her told her, she was going to be able to lick her finger in a council meeting and make him uncomfortable.

Jem ran his tongue over skin that hadn’t had time to relax while she’d taken the phone call. She tightened her hand on Will and matched her hand’s rhythm to whatever Jem did to her. Her eyes felt shut and she put her cheek against Will’s bare chest and timed her breathing to his. She blocked out everything else and lost herself to it.

Jem lapped and sucked and then, as though it were as easy as flipping a switch, he pulled an orgasm out of her that arched her back.

Will reacted with a hiss of breath before folding her in closer to his chest as though she needed protecting. He held on as Jem pulled a cry out of her that she muffled by pressing her face against him. He didn’t release her when Jem did and kept her close.

Will moaned as Jem got closer and added his hand to what Tessa was doing. She couldn’t tell what he did, only that it pushed Will from close to grabbing her and groaning. She felt him spill out across her hand and her hip and as his body shook against hers.

They collapsed together into a heap of tangled limbs. She pulled herself loose enough of Will twist down and get her mouth on Jem.

“Catarina,” Jem said.

“I was going to shower, I don’t need to shower,” she said. Her hair was damp because of the warmth of skin on skin for so long and her inner thighs were wet with what Jem had just done and she had smeared everything Will had left on her across her stomach when she’d rolled over.

She needed to shower.

She ran her tongue down him instead.

Will cuddled as she took Jem into her mouth and sucked him back as far as she could. He wasn’t going to last long. She opened her eyes and looked up at him to find him lost in a deep slow kiss. Will after sex always seemed to want to find ways to melt them together. She’d never seen it from the outside. He was slow and lazy and contented.

Will’s wandering hands and kisses were as much responsible for Jem’s release as she was. He came with a jerk that pushed him deeper into her mouth than she wanted him and she pulled back. Now she had it running down her chin. She was a mess. She needed to shower and get halfway across the city during the morning rush.

She smiled at them instead and burrowed her way back into the space between her boys. Hers. Five more minutes of this before they went out to face the horrors of the world again.


	25. Barunka Nest

In the basement of what had once been a family home was a Barunka nest. Nests were a problem and had been since an enterprising warlock in the 1980s had discovered just how much magic could be drawn from them. The first one Jem had ever seen had been in Berlin in 1982. Even as a Silent Brother, he had been aware of the stench and the sickness in the air even if he couldn't truly smell it. That had been 4 people.

This one was bigger than that. Catarina had been vague as to exactly how many but she had sounded staggered on the phone when she had spoken to Jem before they had left. It was hard to unsettle Catarina and she had seen more Barunka nests than anyone except perhaps Tessa herself.

Will had refused to be left behind and Maryse hadn't stopped to argue. She had simply armed him and sent him out. There weren't enough people available who had the permissions to be allowed into a nest following a sweep. Tessa and Catarina and what they did was a jealous secret that Maryse grudgingly protected. They had sworn up and down that they were prepared to walk away if she didn’t. When Tessa had first offered to help, decades ago, she had been treated like a tool, not a person. The secrecy kept her safe. 

Tessa had been the one to explain everything to Will as they drove.

Barunka was a demon drug, like the yin fen that had once almost killed Jem, though it reacted in the body very differently. Yin fen brought with it artificial strength and energy and a feeling of invincibility. Barunka left you feeling relaxed and euphoric and like you needn't move too much. In the end, yin fen overloaded and weakened the body until the addict died of heart failure. Barunka settled into the muscles and in the final stages, flesh simply rotted away while the addict lay there and smiled at things that didn't exist.

Both of them killed you. All the demon drugs killed you eventually but Barunka was faster and messier than most. 

"Do you understand how demon drugs work?" Tessa had asked Will on the drive across town. She sat with him in the back seat while Jem wove through traffic.

"Better than most people," Will had said.

"But the magic, do you understand how the magic works?" Tessa asked.

"Not really," Will admitted.

"Do you know what yin fen was made from?" she asked. Jem forced himself to keep his eyes on the road. If he looked up at the mirror and caught Will looking at him, he would get distracted. He hated every inch of what she was about to explain and didn't really want to hear it again. He hadn't known any of it as a dying child and he was glad of it. The magic wasn't well understood now and it had been less well understood in the 1870s. That was before the Clave had started their study, before the Spiral Labyrinth had been bullied into releasing their knowledge on the subject and before it had all been put together. Tessa and Will had done a lot of that work themselves over the course of their lives. 

"Demon scales," Will said.

"Yes, you'd need a lot of demon scales to produce yin fen on the scale that it was being exported in the 1800s. They didn't make it by hunting down and skinning the demons. They just had to collect them up. The demons left the scales on purpose and for a reason," she said.

"Because addicts suffer, demons like suffering," Will said and he was the angry boy again. Jem could hear it. Tessa probably had his hand in hers or her fingers in the hair at the back of his neck to calm him. Each time he shattered, she pulled his attention back to her and for a lifetime it had worked.

"Because the addicts were food," Tessa said and Jem felt her attention flicker to him. He didn't react. He signaled and made the left hand turn he had been waiting for. He only drove a little bit too fast down the next street as she continued, "The drugs are magic. The more you take the more the magic gets into your body. The addictions can't be beat because the magic will continue draining away the energy of the person bit by bit and faster and faster if they stop taking it. That energy goes back to the demon whose scales or blood or whatever bit of itself went into creating it."

Will was silent. His attention on the back of Jem’s head was as loud as screaming but Jem still pretended he wasn’t a part of the conversation. He tried to imagine having learned this when he was 17. He wouldn't have taken well to it. To be tied to the thing that had killed his parents? To know that his continued existence was sustaining Yan Luo and its kind? It would have hurt. 

"Did I tell you why they called me into Venice?" she went on.

"You break spells," Will said. There was a stretch of silence as he put the pieces together. A deep inhalation and then, "The addictions are just a spell. You can break a demon drug addiction."

"Yes," she said.

"That's not -" Will started and Jem felt his attention come back.

"What happened to me, no," Jem finished. He had told himself he wasn't going to get involved in this story, he was just going to let her tell it but this piece had always been harder for her.

The thing he’d always needed had been her and she was a century too late for it to matter. He still remembered the conversation when she'd told him and he had explained to her that it was impossible. He couldn't see her face by then but he could feel her. 

He said, "I was a Silent Brother more than a hundred years by the time all of this was known. It couldn't be done on me while I was one of them and I was very close to dead when I had joined. To have the runes lifted would have taken days. I wouldn't have survived long enough to so much as attempt it and I wouldn't have been a good candidate anyways."

Will didn’t have time for many more questions before they arrived. He was still questioning as they climbed out of the illegally parked house in front of the building. The front steps tilted to the side. A peeled realtor’s sign was hammered into the lawn. New York real estate was too expensive for a building to sit vacant like this unless someone really wanted to keep people away. The houses on either side were renovated or rebuilt but this place sat untouched.

“What does good candidate mean exactly?” Will asked as they walked toward the stairs where Clary stood looking pale and small with her arms crossed across her chest. That she was tiny always seemed to escape Jem’s attention. Like Charlotte, she took up more space in a room than should have been alloted to someone her size. Clary was not someone who was easy to ignore.

“We’ve got two. They’re in the living room,” Clary said.

“Catarina made it sound like it was bigger than that,” Tessa said.

“It is, but there are only two that Cat wants you to meet,” Clary said and it was a comment that made Tessa sigh. Jem put a hand on the small of her back but didn’t say anything else. He wasn’t looking at her but Will must have been because he was immediately more defensive. He didn’t put himself between her and Clary but he put himself between her and the house.

“Before you go in there, I want to understand this, stop leaving things out,” he said.

“Nothing I can do can undo the damage that the drug has done,” she said in a heavier voice. Tessa could change with the weather. A girl one moment, a woman the next. Human until she drew herself up and the warlock queen was there behind her eyes. The wind changed and suddenly Tessa was old. She spoke as someone who had seen suffering and carried sadness. Jem didn’t step away from her and he could see Will’s desire to step in and protect her from the melancholy like it was an attacking demon.

“All it can do is break the connection that allows a demon to drain a person’s energy from a distance and even that is painful and dangerous. If someone is already dying, I can’t turn that around. Catarina is the nurse. She goes in once all of the traps and defenses have been removed and she picks out the people who might still recover from the damage done to them. I try and help,” Tessa said.

“There are only two people in there who have a chance of surviving?” Will asked, “Out of how many?”

“More than two,” Clary said and the look she gave them said that she was picking up on the strangeness of the dynamic between the three of them.

“And not everyone survives what I do,” Tessa said. She squeezed Will's hand as she led the way up the stairs. Clary followed them inside. The house smelled of rot and it was not the earthy smell of rotting wood and wallpaper but the sickly sweet smell of decaying flesh. There was an instinctive moment of hesitation in the doorway when the smell hit them. Tessa immediately turned to Clary and followed her to wherever Catarina was waiting.

Jem caught Will’s eye for a moment. This particular sort of Tessa’s magic staggered him sometimes. Reminded him that she was something stranger than he usually thought of her as. A part of him had never shaken memories of Tessa as the nervous girl by the window, doubting she was human. In this situation she wasn’t a nervous girl and she wasn’t just human. She was a child of a demon. She was a warlock. She was a miracle. She was hope where there shouldn't have been any. 

There was a sound from somewhere below them and Jem glanced at the open door that must have led down to the basement. Not everyone got a miracle. He turned back to Will and took his hand.

“Stay with her, don’t touch her while she’s working the spell, it’ll make it harder,” Jem said to Will.

“Are you quite alright?” Will asked.

“I don’t like this but I am fine,” Jem said.

Will gave him a skeptical look and a nod but he hesitated. Jem gave him a gentle shove towards Tessa and the other room. He went and once he was gone, Jem turned and took the stairs down into the dark where the smell was stronger. He knew what he would find. He'd find half dead addicts dreaming their existences away in the center of spell circles.  The energy being pulled out of their bodies by the drug would be turned and twisted and sent into other spells. This wouldn't work with every drug. Yin fen came from greater demons and it couldn't be manipulated like this. Barunka was messy and cheap and made out of the blood of a common cave dwelling demon. 

He had seen it before and thought he knew what to expect. 

He wasn’t prepared for the scope of it.

Every inch of the floor was covered in circles and some of them were being shared by two victims. The Shadowhunters had laid boards down to be able to walk around people without stepping in anything that was slicked across the floor. Jem found Jace by the back wall, a look of disgust on his face as a pair of Silent Brothers were attempting to turn a body that wasn't entirely dead yet. It no longer held together in the shape of the person it had once been.

“Do you know what the magic is for?” Jem asked looking around. His hands itched to do something. There were people dropped into the remains of the previous inhabitants of the circles. Every one of them was doomed. There were no chances and Jem hurt with that knowledge. At least they should be moved out of this place so they didn’t have to die in the filth. He knew though, that that wasn’t an option for most of them. Moving them was as much a death sentence as leaving them was because their bodies were too damaged to survive being lifted.

“We’re working on it. Magnus thinks it’s a tracking thing, that’s how she found Will and Tessa,” Jace said.

There was a sound to Jem's left and he almost convulsed with the horror of it. A moan, low and pained.  He had been there once, had felt his body fall apart around him but at least he had still had his mind and his hope. He reached out. He was getting used to Will being there again but of course Jace didn’t know what he wanted. He dropped his hand, he was going to have to ask. 

“I need a pair of gloves,” he said. Jace wore some and he handed Jem another pair. Barunka probably couldn’t be passed through skin to skin contact but it hardly seemed worth the risk. He made his way over to the source of the sound and sat down beside a young woman with glassy eyes. The extent of how damaged she was was hidden by a blanket wrapped around her. Jem sat on the board of wood that ran beside her but his shoes were in the gore that ran across the floor. He didn’t touch her but he sat and he asked her questions.

If there was nothing to be done and dying the only option, it was better not to die alone.

 


	26. Healers

The victims of the nest were pitiful and glassy eyed but didn't seem to be falling apart which Will had steeled himself for. A young man and a woman old enough to be his mother were lying on little cots in what should have been a parlour or a sitting room of the house. Instead it was a makeshift hospital run by a blue woman wearing a plain set of burgundy clothing that looked like a pair of man's pajamas. Catarina had been no nonsense and practical when Tessa had been hurt on the street but this was her little hospital and she was the queen here.

Catarina demanded respect with her very presence. She had saved Tessa's life when she'd been bleeding and for that, Will would have treated her like royalty if she had wanted it but she didn't need to ask. Like Charlotte or Maryse, she simply was in control. She didn't need to request allegiance or ask permission. She issued orders and people followed them.

Tessa crouched down beside the young man and Clary drew back to the door as though it were something private that she wasn't meant to witness or perhaps something frightening was about to happen. Will looked over at Clary again and dismissed that. Something scary and she wouldn't have stepped away. He'd only seen her in battle briefly during Zoya's attack but she had hardly hung back.

"Can you tell me your name?" Tessa asked in a soft voice.

"Do you have any more?" the man on the cot asked and Clary crossed her arms over her chest a little bit tighter. So that was it. Will stood a little bit behind Tessa and he made himself a promise that he wouldn't flinch away.

Tessa was gentle and careful. She asked the man questions and ignored his requests for more of the drug as though he didn't make them. She coaxed him into answers to things she truly wanted to know. It was a painful process to watch, a little like drawing a person back out of the haze.

It had only been about day that he had been there. Tessa's eyes flicked up to Catarina when she heard that and Catarina's look was hard. Will didn't interrupt though he wanted to know what that meant to them.

"Who would you go home for?" she asked. The man seemed confused by the question but Tessa pressed until she learned that he had a mother outside the city and a younger sister.

"At the end of the treatment," she said using mundane medical words instead of the vocabulary of a spell, "There will come a moment of pain and despair. It will feel like something is trying to destroy you from the inside and you are the only one who can defeat it but you can defeat it. You can make it home to your sister and your mother. You can hold against that feeling because this body is your own and you have the right to it, do you understand that? Are you ready to fight for that?"

He muttered something that wasn't really assent but Catarina shrugged it off. Tessa didn't look happy about it but she went back to her gentle explanations. She was different than she had been that morning. She had aged in the hours since she had smiled and kissed him from Jem's arms.

She belonged somewhere nicer than this.  Someplace warm and safe and loved. She didn't belong in this but Will didn't think she'd agree with that assertion. She was doing good as only she could do it. Still, she didn't even fit in. She wore pale colours. A pair of pants that cut off just below her knee, a shirt with tiny little cap sleeves, her hair held back by a band. Not the doctor's uniform that Catarina wore or the ink black of the Shadowhunters. 

The magic itself was all but invisible. Tessa finally took the man's hand and cleared the doubtful look off his face. She fell still. She went somewhere else. Will remembered her saying that it was the same magic that made her changes possible and he could see that. He could her vanish beneath a layer of magic leaving on a shell that looked like Tessa. Her face was still. Her hands were still. Her breathing was slow. She wasn't sleeping. She was missing in her own body. He wanted to shake her until she woke up but Jem had said touching her would make it worse.

The man screamed and everyone flinched, even the other patient who was still only partially awake. He screamed in a high pitched wail that rose and then cut off.

"No, no, no," Tessa was whispering over and over again but it was too soft to hear until the scream died.

"Tess," Catarina said and Tessa stood and stumbled a few steps back. Her face was her own again, she was back inside her body but she was horrified. She turned to walk away and found Will there. He raised a hand, he planned to put it on her shoulder but he wasn't sure if touching her was allowed or not. She made it clear that it was by wrapping herself up in his arms and pressing her face to his chest. 

Jace appeared in the room. The scream must have drawn him up but any alarm fled as he gave the man on the cot a sad look. Not the man. Not anymore, the body on the cot. He gave Will a more complicated look and Will chose to ignore him and set his chin on Tessa's hair. He had thought having someone outside understanding how much he loved Tessa might be comforting but he didn't really need that look.

"Didn't survive the demon attack?" Jace asked. He stood beside Clary in the door and she leaned into him briefly before they traded posts. She went out into the hall and must have been headed down to wherever Jem was. 

"It was worse than it usually is for a Barunka break," Tessa said. Her voice was muffled by Will's chest. She wasn't crying but he was pretty certain that was stubbornness and not a lack of feeling.

"Demon attack?" Will asked. There hadn't been any attack that he could see. Just the scream and then nothing. 

"Demons don't like losing their walking meals. Sometimes after a break they'll try and use the failing connection to suck down everything that's left. The only one that can beat it is the person it is trying to kill. It's a battle of wills. I can't help, at all. You have to truly want to live to survive it," Tessa said. 

Will nodded. The looks that Catarina and Tessa shared made sense now as did the questions she had asked. Tessa's look had said, "I don't think he'll make it," and Catarina's had asked her to try anyway. Explaining it made Tessa steadier and she stepped away from Will. She went to toward Catarina who was working to bring the other patient around. Will wasn't sure he'd be able to do it he were in her place. To go back there and sit down and risk being that close when another person died.

"You don't have to," he started. She turned back and put a hand on his chest. He wanted her safer than this. This was horrific. The smell of death and the scream of the man as he'd died. Tessa shouldn't have to do this. 

"Yes, I do, you would do it if you could but no one else can, so I will," she said and then she switched to Welsh and said, "Just don't leave me here alone."

Will stared after her. He couldn't remember the last time anyone but Cecily had spoken to him in Welsh. It made him painfully curious and painfully homesick all at once. Where had she learned? Why had she bothered? No one spoke Welsh, even the Welsh barely bothered to learn the language.

She walked back to Catarina and Jace distracted Will with a request to help him move the body. Will did not want to do that either but he didn't refuse. They laid the body down beside some of the others in the kitchen. There were three others, looking mostly whole, who lay there but the stench was worse coming off of them. 

"What will they do with them all?" Will asked.

"We burn it," Jace said in a flat voice, "We can't have mundanes finding out about it. There's enough evidence to make it look like a mundie drug den caught fire. Last thing we need is scientists trying to trace the drug or thinking it's a disease. It's harder to keep Downworld a secret in this century."

Will wasn't quite sure what expression was on his face but Jace nodded at it and then turned and walked out the kitchen door to the back porch. Will glanced back at Tessa and wondered if this counted as leaving her alone. She was immersed in her little interview and Jace jerked his head at Will. He stepped out onto the porch and took a deep breath of untainted air. The porch was rotted and the swing that had hung from the ceiling was only attached on one side. Even the lawn was patches of brown and green. It was just unwatered grass but his mind kept telling him it was like the very ground was starting to rot. Will couldn't argue that the world wouldn't be better with this place burned off the face of it.

"I did some research on you," Jace said.

"It is strange to be dead long enough to be an object of research," Will said testing the banister before deciding to lean against the pillar rather than sit on it.

"Hey, it's strange to meet a long dead relative before he's done any of the stuff he's famous for," Jace said.

"Famous am I?" Will said.

"Enough, there's nothing I could find on your father, a lot on you, a lot on your son as well," Jace said.

"My father left the Clave to marry my mother," Will said and felt a pang at saying it aloud. Was he ever going to see them again? Was he ever going to Cecily again or would they just be lines in history books for the rest of his life? He sighed and shrugged at Jace. Sometimes it was easier to pretend that it didn't bother him.

He smiled and said, "I suppose I named my son James."

"Yeah. How'd you-" he started and then he smiled, "Because you named him after Jem."

"Of course I did," Will said

"So who's Lucie?" Jace asked, "That's your daughter's name according to all the records I found."

Will looked at him and raised his eyebrows. The name Lucie didn't carry any weight for him. Maybe it was a name from his wife's family. He didn't know a Lucie. The only Lucie he could think of was Lucie Manette and she was a character from a novel and that was Tessa's story not his. He stopped breathing for a moment and looked up to find that Jace was expecting him to answer some question he must have asked. Will gave him an apologetic head shake. He hadn't been paying attention. 

"I said that your wife isn't in any of the records. I mean she's there. She did things. She testified at hearings and participated in investigations in London and even Idris but she's always listed as generic things like Mrs. Herondale, I couldn't even find a marriage certificate that listed her name. Someone down the family tree didn't like her much, I guess," Jace said.

Because she was a warlock. Because she was still around to decide what records were kept. Because she had a friend in the Silent City who would take her name out of records that would normally be untouchable. He tried to shake that thought out of his head but it wouldn't go. He said something vague and left Jace to sit on the porch while he went back inside to find her.

The second patient survived. Tessa's relief at that was written all over her face. Will didn't stop to worry about who was watching before crossing the room to pull her into another embrace. They could debate his scandalous behaviour if they wanted. Jem didn't care and he didn't care who else might. She settled against him rather than clung. Her mood was dark but not as panicked or pained as it had been before. He set his chin on her head and gave Catarina a look that was half dare. 

She waved her hand at him. They were being dismissed from her hospital. He smiled a little before turning away and pulling Tessa out into the sunshine. They chose the front porch so that Will wouldn't have to take her past more bodies. He couldn't keep her from this but he could shield her just a little bit. He could make it just a little bit easier. 

She rested against him like she had never been more comfortable somewhere else. Her head against his chest felt like an answer to the question he had been pretending he wasn't asking himself. He tightened his hold on her and she pressed closer. He couldn't remember how he had lived without this.

In a waft of stench, Jem appeared at their side and Tessa pulled back only far enough to look at him. He didn't touch them. There was something viscous soaked into the cuffs of his shirt that Will did not want to think about. Tessa reached out and put a hand to his face. 

"I have to stay until it's over," he said, "You should leave, I heard the yell."

"How new is it? Can they tell?" Tessa asked.

"The Brothers are still checking the spell circles but the current estimate is about a week. There are additions to the spells so they pull energy faster. That's why there are so few that are," he stopped and Tessa ran her hand down the side of his face again and he leaned into her. It reminded Will of Tessa's comments that he was a cat. The word he chose while his eyes were shut and his face was tucked into her hand was, "Healthy, few are healthy because they've been given very high doses and the spell circles are helping to drain them. It was certainly started after we arrived from Venice and Zoya, or whoever is doing it, has no qualms about being noticed. This many disappearances must have the mundane police looking already."

"We'll figure it out," Tessa said.

"Tomorrow. We do that tomorrow. Go home," Jem said.

"I don't want to stay in the city," she said.

"Anywhere you go, I'll find you," Jem said and he leaned in to kiss her cheek. He hesitated and looked at Will. Will kissed him hard and fast because while Jem wasn't sure how public they could be, Will had decided he didn't care. Jem smiled and Will let himself melt into the shared sliver of intimacy for a moment before Jem went back to sit with the dying. Will held onto Tessa after he was gone. She was watching the door he had just gone through.

"Do you want to go after him?" Will asked.

"I've tried to do what he does, I'm not strong enough for it," she said, "Those people are dying for senseless reasons. Jem can sit and give them comfort as the ruined spell makes their slow deaths faster. I can't. I just can't."

"You've done more than enough for one day. Don't imagine that you aren't incredible for doing it. You're a warrior remember, Boadicea and you won that battle. That woman is alive, you did that," he said and held her in the sunshine until she was calm. Then she took him away from there to someplace where she did belong. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Headcanons to go with Tessa’s nonexistence in the Herondale records:
> 
> (these are rambling tumblr thoughts but I'm sharing them here too)
> 
> My supporting headcanon for all of that and for Tessa’s distance from the family in the later years (and why Jamie let it happen because I think that Lydia pushing Tessa out would make him SO mad - he’s incredibly protective of his mother and it gets stronger after Will dies).
> 
> Anyways. There are midcentury treaties pushed through by uber-conservative Clave elements who want to reduce the number of mix-race Shadowhunters. They’re designed to make it harder for half-faeries in particular to climb the ranks in the Clave. In my head it’s the Berlin Treaty. It’s the same strain of racism that pushed Helen and Mark into exile but it was codified into law for a brief span of time. But in order to declare someone unfit for duty you need to prove their heritage - there needs to be a paper trail.
> 
> Owen and Lydia - especially Lydia with small children in the house - freak. So they have to bury Tessa’s existence. They need to make it impossible to prove that there is warlock blood in the Herondale family. It’s fine for there to be rumours of it but there can’t be a paper trail in case someone attempts to use the Berlin Treaty to keep their family from getting ahead in the world. It's James and Lucie against Owen but Tessa herself agrees that it’s the best because she’s got a bit of an issue with being overly selfless. She gives up her connection to her family to keep the Clave from turning on them.
> 
> Tessa has an official death date and everything. She died during the London Blitz during World War II. It’s fabricated but it’s all fabricated very well because Jem has that power as a Silent Brother. 
> 
> The Berlin Treaty is overturned eventually but by then Jamie and Lucie are gone and Tessa doesn’t see any need to come back and insert herself into her descendant’s lives. She’ll just complicate things. She talks herself out of it. She’s still talking herself out by the time Full Circle starts - fearing a little bit that she’ll just make it all worse for Jace - look what the Clave did to Helen and Mark - that sentiment isn’t gone. Tessa doesn’t want to bring her existence down on Jace and end up making it a hammer on his future.
> 
> I have theories that go on for days to back Full Circle up.


	27. Family Stories

Tessa was distant and Will worried about her. His mind kept replaying her panicked moment after the man had died and Jem’s insistence that she leave. He caught little glimpses of her guilt over doing as he had asked. Will didn’t stray too far from her. He kept himself within touching distance as she finished talking to Catarina and checking on the surviving patient. He talked her out of going down into the basement and cajoled her into leaving.

She didn't take him home. 

They stepped through the portal into a large foyer of a true house rather than an apartment. It was blindingly bright after the dingy house. Huge windows seemed to be a theme in Tessa and Jem’s homes. Will looked out the window behind them and saw a large lawn. It was all striking and grand. The apartment was hardly a hideous place but this reminded Will of estate homes and landed families.

That first room with its high ceiling and sweeping staircase, didn’t really seem like Jem and Tessa’s. Once she led him deeper in, though, the house was theirs. Just as the apartment was, this place belonged to Tessa and Jem. It was a little more elegant than the New York apartment. Bigger and broader but with little details that reminded him of each of them. Walking past a wall of pictures from various places around the world, each full of smiles and those two familiar faces, he relaxed a little. It had felt alien to not go back to the apartment but this was still theirs and that made it home too.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"Los Angeles, California," she said.

"We're in California," he said with a smile, "Are there still gold mines out here to strike it rich?"

"Probably not but people still try," she said.

The kitchen here was massive and beautiful with high white cupboards and oak counter tops and white tiling with little details carved into it. She went to the kettle and turned it on to make tea. He followed her but gave her some space as she pulled cups down and sighed at the empty fridge. Milk had to be brought in with a spell but she had everything else for tea. Even her tea mugs in this kitchen were bright white rather than the colourful hodgepodge of the New York apartment.

It was like seeing a different facet of her personality in a physical space. Here was the elegance of Tessa in gowns with her hair done up instead of the casual beauty of Tessa laughing and reading on quiet afternoons. He might have been able to see Jem in the place if Jem were there but as it was just her he had to compare it against he thought of it in terms of her.

"Why did we come here?" he asked.

"I needed to be far away," she said. "I need a country between myself and that."

"Jem will come here?" Will asked.

She nodded. He watched her and Jace’s words played in his head. Could he ask her when she was wrapped up mourning the deaths of strangers? She opened a cardboard box of biscuits and held it out to him. He took one then came to stand at her back. He wrapped his arms around her and set his cheek against her hair. Had they had moments like this in another life? Had it been her he’d spent a lifetime waking up beside?

They didn’t speak. She leaned back into his chest and watched the kettle. He held her and kissed her hair and let his mind rework things he had convinced himself were true.

“I have always loved you,” she had said.

“You’re important to her,” Jem had told him after he’d accidentally reduced her to tears.

Those words in Welsh clear and easy to understand but sounding like a different language in her accent.

“I loved you with your children on your knee,” she had said.

“We’ve done this,” she had said that night in the church when she’d drawn magic out of him.

“You’ve read it before,” she had said when he had found his own handwriting in a book she must have kept for decades.

There was trust and love and a deep well of memories and experiences. They had been close. He couldn’t have been close to her like that if he had married someone else. The only way he could have survived a marriage like that would have been to run away from Tessa Gray. If he never saw her, he might have been able to love some other girl and pretend to be happy. It would have hurt, every day it would have hurt but it would have been possible. To sit in a room with her and the girl he was pretending to love wouldn’t have been manageable.

She didn’t pull away from him as she reached out and poured water from the whistling kettle into the pot. She did it all carefully, without spilling water. The sounds of it were homey. The slosh of water and clink of china. Will held her a little tighter and she held up another biscuit over her shoulder and he took a bite out of it without loosening his hold on her. She ate the other half. It was simple and somehow intimate and it felt like an answer to the question he had been silently asking over and over all afternoon.

“What were your children’s names?” he asked her. It was the first thing either of them had said in a quarter of an hour. She stilled. She didn’t tense but she fell perfectly still. She stepped away from him and he let her go and immediately started to reevaluate the sense of surety that had been been beating in his chest a moment before.

“Are you sure you want to have that conversation?” she asked.

“Yes, I do,” he said.

She smiled and turned away from him. For a brief moment he panicked that he had destroyed the comfort and connection they had been building but she was only gathering the tea things and putting them on a tray.

“This isn’t a kitchen conversation, come on,” she said and she led him down another long hallway into a glass walled sun room that looked over another long green lawn. It was almost like the country but beyond the hedges there were flashes of sunlight off of glass and metal in the city beyond. The wicker furniture here was clean and white like the kitchen but piled with colourful cushions. The white might have seemed stark if it weren’t for the fabrics in purples and blues with splashes of yellow and a riot of overgrown plants along one wall.

This was Tessa’s space, not Jem’s. Will wasn’t sure why he was so sure of that but this wasn’t a space they’d decorated together. It was a place that she had created. She put the tray on a table and he sat down on the largest sofa and waited for her to join him but she didn’t. She looked at him with that same smile on her face.

“I will be right back,” she said, “Pour the tea.”

He did as he was told and she came back with a square of metal and glass larger than a phone and put it on the table without explaining it. She took a sip of tea and then sat down beside him.

“Ask me again,” she said.

“What are the names of your children?” he asked.

“Our son was called James, our daughter Lucie,” she said. He didn’t miss the switch in pronoun. Not my children, our children. His heart stuttered and then settled almost immediately. Yes. Good. Right.

“After Lucie Manette?” he asked.

“Yes, though she was often just Luce and James was always Jamie. Always. He disliked it as he got older, felt it was a childish nickname but still, he was always Jamie to family, if not the wider world,” he could hear the smile in her voice though he kept his attention on his cup of tea. She leaned against his shoulder. He put his tea down and took hers as well.  Then he pulled her back with him and she obliged, adjusting her body and the pillows until they lay curled around each other in the pile. Her hair fell around her face, the cushions created a nest that he could lean her back into.

“How long were we married?” he asked.

“A lifetime,” she said. She put her hand to his heart and kissed him so gently the feeling in his chest was almost pain, “I never left you.”

“When Jem said he would tell me everything, this is what he meant,” Will said.

“There’s more to everything. A lifetime is a long time after all but yes, this is the big thing. Are you better for knowing it?” she asked. They whispered. It was mid afternoon but cuddled into the pillows and her arms, it felt intimate and quiet, like dawn before the rest of the world had woken. They were alone.

“I am better just for being in the same room as you,” he said. “To know that I loved you, that you loved me, I am a better person for it. Never doubt that. I glad to know.”

She curled into him a little closer and he felt the tension drain from her. It was like she had been waiting for this secret to be out and now that it was, she was immediately calmer. He ran his fingers through her hair, drew his knuckles down her cheek, touched his nose to hers. His. She had been his for a lifetime. That possessiveness rolled through him like a wave.

Tessa belonged with Jem. They needed each other, belonged together, belonged to each other. That morning he’d felt like an addition. They were the center and he was the little extra piece that followed along. That wasn’t the truth. The truth was more tangled than that. She was his and he belonged to Jem in a way he didn’t belong to anyone else.

He held her a little closer and she responded, dropping her leg over his, wrapping an arm around his neck, smiling when her face fell against his neck. He didn’t want her not to be Jem’s but to have her be his felt like a miracle. He held her and said nothing. There were questions to be asked but he let them lie for a moment.

“Here and now,” he whispered as he ran his finger down her neck to the collar of her shirt over and over while she smiled at him, “Here and now, you are married to Jem. If I were to take you courting, if I were to bring you flowers and ask you to dance, would you marry me too?”

“I’m already married to you,” she said, “It doesn’t stop. There isn’t an expiry date.”

“I want to remember it. I want to experience it. I want to ask you and hear you say yes,” he said. As he spoke he had pulled her even closer and whispered into her ear.

“Then yes, William Herondale, take me out, woo me and impress me and sweep me off my feet,” she said. He laughed as he turned over his options in his mind. They would have to deal with the homicidal maniac of a warlock who tried to kill him when he set foot outside but once that was done his mind turned over choices.

“What was our wedding like?” he asked.

“Awful,” she said.

“No, truly?” he asked pulling back to see if she was joking but her expression wasn’t teasing.

“It was a political Clave mess. It was more about trying to convince the Clave that you were a person worth following into battle than it was about love or us or anything else. The marriage was a fairytale, the kind people dream of having, but the wedding itself was a viper pit that dragged on far too long,” she said and she was laughing.

“I will remember that, no vipers to be invited to future ceremonies. Not even if they wear a fancy hat and waistcoat and bring a gift,” he said which made her laugh harder. He held her like it was possible to climb inside her laughter and become a part of it. “What about you and Jem?”

“We got married on a bridge,” she said as the laughter calmed into a smile.

“An unusual choice,” Will said.

“We’re unusual in more ways than just that,” she said.

“That is true,” Will said laughing.

“Do you want to hear stories?” she asked.

“About us?” he asked.

“And our family. About Cece and Charlotte and your mother trying to teach me how to speak Welsh because she wanted to make sure that her grandchildren could speak it,” she said.

He nodded. It was going to hurt. This was a life that he might never get a chance to live and if he did, if he got to go back and pick up the threads that would lead to her memories, it would mean losing this. He could have her and Jem and mornings curled together without any space between them. He could have a life where he watched his sister’s children grow up alongside his own and he and Tessa were the type of people he’d always imagined being: respected, loved, important.

But he couldn’t have both lives.

He pushed down all those thoughts as Tessa sat up beside him and dropped her knees over his lap. Whatever else happened, he could enjoy this. She grabbed the giant phone with one hand and settled in against him with her cooling tea in the other.

“You do not want to know how long it took Jem and Magnus and I to do this,” she said, “Alec had to call Simon to help us set up the scanner. I didn’t tell them all the stories then because I haven’t told Jace but they know that I used to be close with the London Institute.”

She opened up the device and paged through it until she found a series of little icons with labels that were either dates or family names or places.

“I have all the originals still but paper gets fragile eventually and this way, they won’t get lost if the cabin floods or catches fire,” she said and she tapped one of the first ones. It opened into an image he had seen before. Henry’s portrait of the London Institute in 1878 before Jessamine had betrayed them, before Cecily had joined them. Jem with his bright silver hair and Tessa younger than she was now.

Homesickness roiled and he leaned his head against Tessa’s shoulder and just stared at the image.

“I, we, if you don’t want to look at pictures, we don’t have to,” she said, “Maybe it’s a little too strange.”

“No, show me another one,” he said.

“There are pictures of Jem, after, in here,” she said.

“I want to see it,” he said.

“Do you want to see the kids?” she asked.

“Yes and anything you have of my parents. I haven’t seen them in years,” he said and had to steady his voice out because it had wavered. He didn’t ask for explanations on how she had been introduced to his parents. Those stories would come too.

She took him through black and white photographs and a few photographs of portraits. A picture of the two of them on what must have been their wedding day. A family portrait before their daughter had been born was next. Will’s eyes caught on the little boy with an intense look on his face and a spoon held in his hand sitting on his mother’s lap and looking bored in the way of small children made to stay still. Then another with the little boy standing between his parents and his spot taken by a girl with an almost elven face.

Lucie looked like she was on the brink of laughter in most images especially the later ones where she hadn’t needed to hold still as long. Jamie was more serious but always looked happy. The pictures were interspersed with those of other children and families. Charlotte and Henry with two boys. Cecily and Gabriel which Will opened his mouth to comment on and caught Tessa’s teasing look before he could say anything.

“So I’ve expressed my views on that before,” he said.

“You came around. He’s not nearly as hateful as you seem to think he is,” she said.

“But he is a little bit hateful,” Will said which made Tessa laugh like it was an old, shared joke. Will didn’t like the idea of his sister and Gabriel Lightwood. He didn’t like the idea of Gabriel Lightwood at all. There was one picture that had caught him looking at Cecily and that look almost made Will reconsider while Tessa told a story involving the two of them and their son that he only halfway heard.

Henry and his camera hadn’t been regular in their lives - there were no cascades of photos of one day or one moment the way Jem had of Tessa but there were enough to trace the families.

The one of him and Jem, runed and pale, with closed eyes and bone coloured robes, hurt. He made her stop there. He looked at it for a long time and tried to see his Jem in that face. He wasn’t there. Jem had been buried under spells and runes and robes. The thought of falling in love with his silver haired Jem had been in his head recently. Could it have happened? Had this thing that they had now always been there? It wasn’t there in Brother Zachariah.

“He came back,” she said.

“I hate that he had to leave at all,” Will said.

“Me too,” she said.

He didn’t want to have that conversation so he pushed back the images to a colour portrait, a painting of Lucie and James that must have been commissioned close to his first runing. He was about ten. Will smiled at these two people he might never meet.

“Lucie’s favourite colour?” he said.

“She changed it often but usually sunset colours, orange or pink or yellow,” Tessa said and Will settled her back against the cushions for a rapid fire round of questions about the two little faces on the screen. Each time the screen started to shut off, one of them tapped it and brought it back so it stayed bright.

Suddenly, Tessa turned it off and turned into him with her eyes closed. She was holding back tears. He was still thinking about it all in the abstract. These children were an idea to him. People who might or might not ever exist in his life. In one sharp, shuddering breath, Tessa reminded him that they were people she had known, loved, and ultimately lost.

He ran his fingers through her hair and something about the touch cracked her tenuous composure. The first time he had accidentally reduced her to tears, she had run and gone to cry alone. This time she let him comfort her. She held onto him, she let him stroke her hair, she stayed close even once the tears had passed.

There was more tea, a message from Jem, food that was delivered in little cardboard containers to the front door, and the tears didn’t come back. Tessa stayed close to him. She touched his hand while they ate. She watched him differently than she had the day before.

Possessiveness, it appeared, was not a one way street. He was thankful for ever moment even before she stood up and held out a hand and gave him a smile that was all invitation.

 


	28. First Dream

They ate takeout in the kitchen and when it was all put away in the empty fridge she turned to look at Will. He was bright and bold against all the white of the kitchen. Black hair that stuck up a little bit from being mussed against cushions while they’d cuddled and talked about the past. He watched her with midnight eyes. He leaned against the counter, balanced just a little bit precariously on the stool.

“I love your eyes,” she said.

“I love all of you,” he said and she laughed.

She took Will’s hand and pulled him out of the room. The last of the walls were gone. The secret was out and every little thing that had been getting in the way of her desire to touch him was gone. He wasn’t as she remembered him but he was hers again. Not quite the same person but her Will nonetheless. Jem had come home to her different too and they had found a way to make it work.

She held his hand and paused in the hallway just to turn around and look at him. She put a hand up to touch his chest. He smiled at her like she was a revelation. It was a soft dark look, and she wondered if he knew how much his desires were written across his face. They were eloquent and indistinct all at once.

She stopped again, at the top of the stairs, suddenly nervous that she was pushing him. She took his face in her hands and ran her thumbs over the laugh lines that hadn’t settled in yet and the soft skin of his cheeks. He smiled at her and though they wouldn’t stay, she could see where those lines would someday form. A lifetime of smiles etched into his face.

“Tell me what you want,” she said.

“You,” he said.

“Be specific,” she chuckled and leaned her forehead into his shoulder so that she could hide her face and her rush of nerves. It was a little bit thrilling to be nervous.

“I want you. I want you here. I want to hold you and protect you and have you near me. I always believed I could never love anyone and then I fell in love with you and it changed me. It made me believe in miracles that I’d never though to look for before. I am whole because of you,” he said. She wrapped her arms more tightly around his shoulders and he held her secure and close.

“I want to be close enough to touch you. Everything else, anything else more than I deserve,” he said into her ear.

“And yet?” she prompted.

“I’d really like to try and replicate that thing Jem did to you this morning,” he said in a lower voice.

She laughed and it made him calmer. The tightness in his chest and shoulders released just a little bit and she stood and cuddled him for just a moment more before she turned and pulled him into the bedroom. It had more bright white walls but rich dark colours in the wood and the fabrics.

Will pulled her towards the bed and she pushed him back first so he landed on his back and looked up at her with wide eyes. She climbed up beside him, finding every excuse to slide low and tight to his body. His hands kept finding her skin, slipping up under clothing to touch her. She settled in against his side, her leg draped over him and her fingers in his hair. She loved the thickness of his hair, the way the curls dragged back against her fingers.

Nose to nose, she giggled. Giddiness raced through her and when she shifted her leg, she could feel the evidence of other feelings racing through him. He had the ghost of a smile on his face. One of those expressions that one doesn’t even notice. He turned into her as his hands came up to cup her face.

He traced her features and on his way past her mouth she opened it and licked his fingers. He froze and then carefully brought them back. She licked them again and then closed her mouth over just one and sucked on it. His eyes were wide and the shock and desire on his face made her push it farther than she might have. She pulled that one finger farther into her mouth and nursed at it.

He pulled his hand back and caught her face, wet fingers sliding back into her hair as he kissed her hard. She slowed him down by answering every fervent press of lips with something gentler until he slowed to match her rhythm rather than forcing her to match his. The kisses grew languid and when he started to loosen her clothing he was slow. Each uncovered piece of skin needed to be touched and then touched all over again.

He unbuttoned her pants and ran his palm over the bit of skin that had been previously covered, he pushed the fabric down and stopped to lean down and press a kiss to her hip. She matched each touch, his hand on her hip, her hand on his. He realized what she was doing and started playing with her.

He pressed a kiss between her breasts and she returned it. Then she slid a little higher and kissed his parabatai rune. He stilled. His hand was tracing her spine and it stopped while she traced the shape with glancing kisses. An old tradition but it had never been sharp and black against his skin when she’d been able to do this to him before.

He caught her face and pulled her up into another kiss that made her gasp. She kissed him as she struggled the rest of the way out of the pants he had unbuttoned. She’d gotten dressed in a hurry and had a moment of wishing she’d had something more dramatic on. Not that Will cared. She wasn’t sure Will noticed what she was wearing most days. She was either there or she wasn’t. If she was, she could be wearing a potato sack and he would still look at her like the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

Most of their clothing was gone and she wriggled away from him and pulled him down into the bed. It had been made but it had been sitting for at least a month. Usually she would have remade it with magic or laundry when they came back to the house after being away. Tonight, she didn’t pause to think about things like that and some scent clung to the sheets that reminded her of Jem.

Will was heavy as he followed her down into the nest of blankets she had rucked up around them. He settled against her and there was no sense of being pinned down, only of coming home. They both stopped and just took a moment to enjoy the closeness. Will’s heart rate was thundering like he’d been running for his life and his stomach was pressed to hers so she could feel his breathing flutter. He seemed to have drawn all the nerves out of her and absorbed them until he was half mad with nervous tension.

“Can I make it easier?” she asked him. He was hard against her, it wasn’t a matter of disinterest and she didn’t think it was fear. She wanted to push him forward but he didn’t seem ready for it.

“I’m going to make a mess of it,” he muttered into her ear.

“Impossible,” she said, “This is perfect. I have you and you are perfect. We can stop here and I’ll be content.”

“I don’t want to stop here,” he admitted.

She laughed and whispered, “I’m very glad to hear that. There are better things than content.”

He started to laugh and his tension shattered again. He gathered her close and they laughed together. Even nervous, Will wasn’t tentative. He started at her mouth and then kissed his way down her body. His mouth on her collar bone, her breast, her ribs and then across her stomach to the waistband of the only clothing she had left. He nuzzled her stomach and she ran her fingers through his hair.

She pulled herself a little higher so she could lean back against the pillows. It made it easier to see him and if he was going to do this, she wanted to be able to see it. He readjusted and kissed her stomach again before he pulled the panties away and she fell back with her knees wide and her fingers still in his hair.

He rested his face against her thigh and looked up her body at her. He was all blue eyes. The rest of the details fell away, he was just blue eyes and a smile. The blankets around them were pale blue and it made his eyes look more impossible. Midnight in hell or the night sky over heaven. He was angelic and yet he would never quite shake that devil’s tilt to his smile no matter how far from his curse he got.

His hands pulled her all the way back from her daydreaming and she moaned a little as he touched her with fingers first. Then he cuddled in closer, his arm up under her leg and his palm against her stomach as though he might need to hold her down. The first sweep of his tongue knocked her head back and her eyes shut not because of the sensation itself but because it was Will.

She did not twist her fingers into hair but she did reach down and link her fingers with his so she’d have something to hold onto. He had one hand unnecessarily holding her down and the other laced with hers. She had set him on this slow indulgent pace with the kisses from before and he kept to it. He kissed her, nuzzled and lapped with his tongue and when her fingers tightened on his, he did it again.

In some things, Will had no patience but there were others that he could do for hours without losing interest. This was the latter. It was slow and gentle and relaxing and the tension before her release built up just as slowly.

“Please,” she muttered, eyes half closed, fingers buried in his hair.

Maddeningly he stopped what he was doing and pulled himself up to set his chin on his own hand. It put his mouth far away from where she wanted it and she frowned a little at him. He smiled and it was far more devil than angel. So he had understood what she was asking for. She frowned a little harder.

“You can’t stop here,” she said and her voice came out hazy.

“I could,” he said. She tried to look disapproving but it probably just came across as hazy and pleasure soaked. He looked at her and she smiled back at him. Those eyes were a place to get lost in and she needed him closer. She pulled on his hand where it was still locked with hers and he obliged. He slid up over her body and the feeling of having him against her almost pushed her the rest of the way to an orgasm.

She kissed him. Kissed him deeper and harder but no less slow than they had done before. He let go of her hand in favour of wrapping his arms around her waist and her back and holding her tight to him. She returned the embrace and shifted her hips until what she wanted was unavoidable.

Will stopped and looked at her. They were close enough to kiss but for a moment they didn’t. She reached down and put him where she wanted him. He made a soft sound that might have been desire or protest and she looked up into his eyes until she was sure it was desire. He pushed into her in one single stroke that made them both shudder. She wasn’t quite ready for him to go that deep but the discomfort was balanced out by his face pressed into her neck.

“Oh my god,” he whispered and he shifted and pulled a sound out of her. She moved and he matched her. It wasn’t so much a thrust as it was rocking together. The sensation of his body against hers erased that near pain almost immediately. She held on as he pushed her over into the orgasm that had been building and didn’t stop as her back arched and she cried out.

She didn’t have time to come down. Her body prickled with sensitivity and he didn’t stop. It was exhilarating and might have hurt if he weren’t so gentle. She held onto him and hid her face away against his throat.

His hands didn’t stop. When she shivered with a rush of sensation, his hands were there smoothing over her stomach or her shoulder until it passed. His hands and the way he turned her face back to him to kiss made him seem less inexperienced than he was. He was confident. He was sure of where he wanted to be and that it was a shared desire. It more than made up for any clumsiness.

He lifted her just a bit off the mattress as he shifted and the new angle dragged her across his skin enough to push her back past the point of incoherence. She came back slowly, pressed into him with her mouth open and panting as he finally reached his own point of no return. She had just a moment to brace herself before he pushed into her as far as he could. It was just a little bit too far. She knew that. She had been here before and it could hurt but the vividness of this lost memory changed it from pain into a kind of pleasure that ran deeper than any physical sensation.

He groaned and her cry crescendoed before they both collapsed.

He fell sideways and curled into her. He lay at her side and held her like letting her go would mean giving up the right to breathe. She tried to match his intensity, to hold him as close as he held her. She tucked herself around him and pet his hair and drifted in the bliss of it.

“Contented?” he asked and her laugh was dozy. She was tracing lines down his back with her fingertips and he was nuzzling her shoulder.

“Very,” she said.

“I don’t think I could go back,” he said burying the words in her skin. “I don’t know how I would leave you two.”

“I want you to stay,” she said.

“You are not the last dream of my soul,” he muttered in a voice that she wasn’t really meant to hear. When Will’s walls came down, they crashed all the way down. His barriers were either complete or nonexistent. In that moment there was nothing between his emotions and the world. Protectiveness ran through her.

“You are the first dream, the only dream I ever was unable to stop myself from dreaming. You are the first dream of my soul, and from that dream I hope will come all other dreams, a lifetime’s worth,” she recited, the rest of the letter he had written to her but never had a chance to give her in his own time.

Somehow he managed to pull her closer, press tighter though there was already no space between them. She pulled his face up to look at her and there were unshed tears in his eyes. He so rarely cried and she felt guilty for ever leaving him with the belief that she didn’t love him. She kissed him and tried to make it an apology for ever breaking his heart and a promise that she never would again.

“With hope at last,” he whispered into the kiss.

“I love you,” she said, “Believe me. I love you.”

“I believe you, Tess, of course I do. I love you and I could never doubt you,” he said and kissed her back much less gently. They were both too spent for more than that but when the kiss broke apart again Tessa was stretched out on top of him and thinking about doing it all over again. His expression was sleepy and happy and it eased some of the fervent protectiveness. He was fine. In that moment, he was safe and happy and that was enough.

They fell asleep tangled together and dreamed about lifetimes yet to come. 


	29. Memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the massive gap in the update. I am struggling with my own perfectionist tendencies in this story as it gets near the end and it leads to panic and the inability to write things. Hopefully this was the hump and we'll be back to reasonably paced updates from here to the end.

Jem showered until he couldn't smell the death on him anymore. It was dark and he was exhausted. He shouldn't have done it. He shouldn't have stayed but no one should have to die with no one but a Silent Brother standing over them. He had talked and laughed and tried to fill that space with things that might call up memories of better times.

Clean and wearing Will's clothing, not because he couldn't go get his own but because he wanted to wear something that had been close to him, he went to find a warlock who could send him across the country. He caught Catarina before she could leave the Institute and she gave him a judgmental look. He was imposing and though he apologized repeatedly he didn't rescind his request.

They stood under the glowing arch. It wasn't magic that should be played with. Jem felt guilty for asking her for this after such a long day. The black inside the portal beckoned. It no longer seemed alien nor terrifying. The space looked like velvet, matte black and soft. It was his ticket home and he tried to remember the feeling of being unnerved by the portals but those memories were Silent Brother memories and he couldn't call them up tonight.

"Ragnor had notes. He did all kinds of dimensional bending the rest of us can't touch but we're reading through it. If we figure it out and we can send that boy home, are the two of you prepared for that?" Catarina asked.

Jem considered his possible answers and gave her the truth, "I'm not. I won't speak for Tessa on this."

"She loves him like air, she always did, does that bother you?" Catarina asked.

"Does it really matter to you?" Jem asked it had been a long day and he was as tired as anyone else. He did not relish explaining or defending himself.

"She's a friend, I worry over her," Catarina said.

"No it does not bother me, it is hardly a surprise. I knew them when they were together. They were always elemental, fire and air, they need each other," Jem said.

"Does that make you water?" she asked and then she tilted her head and considered him, "No, you're earth, the support beneath everyone else's feet. I hope you don't regret it. They call it scorched earth for a reason."

"If I get burned in this, I won't regret it. Somethings are worth the pain," Jem said, "I'd like to go home now, if you don't mind."

Catarina waved at the portal as though dismissing him from one of her classes. He smiled and thanked her repeatedly and then stepped into the Los Angeles house. The press and spin of the portal no longer even had the power to make him nauseous. It was just a part of life, like cars and cell phones and Tessa's sinister looking herb gardens full of things he couldn't identify. The sun was setting in LA and he paused to look out the window at the light reflecting off of the city in the distance.

In the kitchen was a piece of paper taped to a light fixture. "EAT SOMETHING" was written on it in block letters above an arrow and a little "i love you" in the bottom corner. He pulled it down and looked in the direction of the arrow. Inside the fridge was the remains of takeout curries. He could picture Tessa forcing Will to eat things he couldn't identify. He was a fussy eater and had probably glared at her with each new thing but he also couldn't say no to her so he had probably had a little bit of everything.

Jem picked through and found the ones he liked and ate them and then went back and ate just about everything that was left. He left the mess on the counter and went upstairs. Each step was taken with feet heavier than they should have been. It had been a long time since he’d been this tired.

They were curled in bed, asleep and undressed, tangled in sheets and each other. He stood in the doorway and just watched them for a long time. He was tired but they were so peaceful that he didn't want to risk waking them. He grabbed the quilt they had knocked off the bed and pulled it up. Tessa didn't stir but Will blinked up at him. Jem leaned down and kissed him and then left them together. They needed some time to just be together.

He went back downstairs and found the ipad left on the couch in the sun room. When he unlocked the screen a portrait of James and Lucie when they were small smiled up at him. He sat down and held it between both hands and looked down at their little faces. He had last seen them like this. Before he'd closed his eyes for a century. He'd never looked James Herondale in the eye when he was a man. He suddenly felt the loss of that. He shut off the screen and rather than going anywhere else, he curled up and went to sleep right there amid Tessa's piles of pillows. 

* * *

Will woke up with hair in his face and his fingers tingling with pins and needles as he tried to move them. Tessa had her head on his shoulder and the weight of it had put his hand to sleep. She was serene and looked so much younger than she was. Had he thought she was beautiful from the moment he met her? He wasn’t sure anymore. He remembered all the moments in the light of all that had come after. He loved her now and it made imagining a time when he didn’t love her almost impossible.

It took him a moment to figure out what had woken him. There were soft sounds somewhere else in the house. His immediate thought was that it was the maid but there wasn’t a maid here, at least he didn’t think there was.

“Tess?” he shook her awake. Her eyes fluttered and as soon as they caught on him she smiled. His worries about people in the house fled for a moment and he kissed her. She pulled him in and he followed her back down into the bed. There was another sound and she looked up at him.

"Is Jem in the kitchen?" she asked frowning at him.

"Sounds like it," Will said relaxing. Jem. Not some invader or a demon coming to kill them all. Jem. He wrapped his arms around Tessa but she shook her head at him. She pulled loose and he made a disappointed noise that brought a smile to her lips but it didn’t stop her from leaving. She grabbed herself a pair of soft trousers and one of those barely there shirts with the thin straps she seemed to have hundreds of. He watched her body disappear back into clothing with the same interest he had in watching her take it off.

He followed her, grabbing something from the drawer she had. He pulled them on without looking too closely. She was tall enough that even though the pajamas were designed for a woman, they didn’t fit him too terribly. He hurried out into the hall and followed her back to the kitchen.

Jem looked up at them and smiled over the top of the coffee mug in his hand. He had shadows under his eyes and the smile was small and fell away quickly. Tessa was already across the space and pulling the cup out of his hand when Will got there. She put it down on the counter top behind him and stepped in close. She traced the shadows in his face and the little smile danced across his face again.

"I'm so sorry," she said and Jem started to answer her. She reached up and put her hand gently over his mouth, "Listen to me for a minute so I can tell you what I'm sorry for before you start telling me not to be."

Jem looked like he was about to argue again but fell silent instead. Tessa hopped up onto the counter top and pulled him in so he stood between her knees and had to look up at her. Will hesitated, wondering if this was just about the two of them. Tessa caught his eye and though he couldn’t translate the look she gave him into words he understood it. He came to stand behind Jem and wrap his arms around his waist. Jem pressed against him a little bit and Will held on a bit tighter. Once they were settled Tessa touched Jem’s face again.

“I’m listening,” he said.

"I am not sorry for leaving the kitchen a disaster. I am not sorry for needing to leave New York. And I am not sorry for taking Will to bed," she said and Jem nodded as she talked, "I am sorry that it was a surprise. I am sorry I didn't warn you before you came home. I am sorry that you felt like there wasn't space for you in your bed. I will never do that to you again."

"You can take him to bed whenever you want," Jem said to her shaking his head.

"Not without letting you know that I'm doing it," she said. Will felt his body language change as he relaxed. He had needed to hear that.

For the first time saw it from the other side. He and Tessa had been married for years. Years he didn’t remember but Jem did. He could see it the way Jem saw it. The way it would have felt like he was standing in the way of that return, in the way of something he assumed Tessa wanted more. Will looked at the two of them and saw a near perfect pair and now he could see that Jem saw much the same thing. Will held him a little tighter, trying to put into the hug the inarticulate feeling he had that even if it they had once been something separate, it wasn’t true now.

"And I need you to do the same for me," she said, "When you go off in the middle of the night to rescue one another from dance clubs and poetry readings or whatever else, you need to tell me. If you hadn't been there that morning that Alison was here, I would have panicked. I almost did."

"No surprises," Jem said.

"Thank you," she said, “There are days when I want nothing but you and there are going to be days when I need time to wrap myself up in Will. But if it hasn’t been asked, if no one’s said they need that time, then the default is always come to bed,” she said.

“Is that an invitation?” Jem asked and Tessa smiled at him.

“Yes,” Will said with a laugh and a kiss against the back of his neck, “There were promises of cuddling until noon.”

“Do you need to talk about yesterday?” Tessa asked reaching past him to touch Will and give him a little warning look.

“No, I just need to be someplace safe for a little while. I need to pretend, just for a few minutes, that the world isn’t full of evil people who would do that. What was done to me was done by a demon but a person did that to those people,” he said. He stopped with a deep breath.

Will held him tighter like there was a way to hold memories like that at bay with enough love. Tessa dropped down off the counter and put her arms Jem’s neck. Will could feel her body against his arms where they crossed over Jem’s stomach. Maybe you could push out the bad if you had enough moments like this.

Jem twisted so he could see them both and he looked like he was about to say something else. Instead he frowned at Will with a little half smile.

“Are you wearing pink pajamas?” Jem asked looking down at Will with a look that slid over his bare chest with far more weight than it should have had. Will looked down. He was wearing pink pajamas. He hadn’t even stopped to consider it.

“I appear to be, yes, they’re actually very comfortable, and pink is very fashionable this season,” Will said, “And look, they’ve even got little yellow things printed on them.”

He leaned back and braced a foot on the counter like he were a pirate posing in a penny dreadful illustration. Jem turned to look at him and ran a hand up his leg. It was casual and cursory, like he was looking at the print. Will reacted to the touch and caught the edge of Jem’s smirk to tell him he’d done it on purpose.

“They’re ducklings,” Tessa said leaning in to rest her chin on Jem’s shoulder.

“Why would own pajamas with ducks on them, of all the things?” he asked.

“They make me feel tough and brave, someone told me once that ducks are blood thirsty beasts,” she said sharing Jem’s smirk. Will raised his eyebrows. Jem still had a hand curled around his calf. Will edged in closer and Jem’s hand traveled up to his thigh.

“They are bloodthirsty little monsters, even the tiny yellow ones,” Will said with as much faux seriousness as one could have while discussing pink pajamas and ducklings.

They left the kitchen and fell back into bed with tea and blankets. Will refused to cave to any sort of teasing and wore his duckling pajamas as proudly as he could manage. They talked about nothing of any substance: other woodland creatures that might secretly be cannibalistic, what was fashionable that season, Jem’s plans to attempt to teach himself the qin, Tessa’s favourite bookshop in LA.

“It’s a little bit tragic, Dennis and Alison, that they died so far from home, no one they knew will ever know what happened to them,” Tessa said in a lull in the conversation. The darker questions didn’t stay away long.

They were curled up, overlapping but not doing more than talking and touching. It reminded Will more of being a little boy curled up with his sisters than it did of anything he and Tessa had done the night before. Homey and comforting.

“I wonder what she would have grown up like,” Jem said.

“Who?” Will asked.

“Alison, Dennis as well, but I hardly spoke to him. Alison was so young, she’d barely had a chance to start becoming herself,” Jem said.

“But we met her,” Will said untangling himself enough to sit up and look at Jem. Jem lay with his head on Tessa’s lap, she leaned against the headboard, Will hand managed to drape himself around the bed enough to be able to touch them both. He had been playing with Tessa’s hair.

“I meant older, in her 40s or her 50s. She was only twenty,” Jem said.

“She must have been about fifty, dark blue jacket, braided hair, angry,” Will said.

“When?” Tessa asked. She sat up a bit straighter and Will looked at her.

“The meeting, she was helping on one of the Clave teams and was furious that we hadn’t informed her that she was here. That was why Alison had too much to drink at that party,” Will said frowning and looking between them. It hadn’t been a small event. They’d both been there but they were shaking their heads and Tessa looked more and more alarmed.

“Tess?” Will asked.

“We forgot it,” she said.

“I suppose so, the magic must have changed,” Will said with a bit of shrug. He couldn’t make sense of her panicked expression.

“She died and her life ceased to exist. She just disappeared from history. We forgot her,” Tessa said with more intensity in her voice. Will reached for her but she was already out of the bed and walking towards the window with her arms wrapped around her stomach.

“Most magics need balance to work properly. That’s why there needed to be someone sent back. That’s why the missing people. It won’t work to pull someone out of time without a counter balance. It would take a lot of power and it would be incredibly difficult to do with any precision. We knew that but it also anchors the spells together. You can use spell anchoring in all kinds of magic. There are dark magics that use anchoring to do truly evil things I’ve even read about it being used in puppet spells that allow you to anchor two people together and control the movements of one but that kind of magic is nearly necromancy. It is illegal, very illegal,” she was talking fast and not really to either of them.

Jem followed her across the room and touched her arm. He tried to pull her attention back from her rambling about magic. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Tessa go off on a tangent like that. He’d seen her angry but never distracted like that. Will knew that he was missing something but wasn’t quite sure what it was that had her quite this upset.

“Each arrival is anchored to their own past?” Jem asked her his hands on her elbows.

“Until the anchor is broken. When Alison died, her own anchor line was broken. Her time line rearranged itself. Our pasts changed as well because she was a part of our lives. We forgot meeting the Alison Lynburn who no longer existed. Will is outside the time line. He is immune to the change because this isn’t where he belongs in time either,” Tessa said.

“If she had been sent back, our memories would have changed to reflect that as well?” Jem asked.

“Presumably,” Tessa said tucking herself in a little closer. Jem had untangled her hands from where she had crossed them and was holding them in his. She was too upset for Will to be able to keep his distance. He came across the room and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. She was stiff and defensive for a moment and then collapsed against his chest. She put her head down on his shoulder with a sound that was almost a sob.

“Tessa?” Jem asked as she let go of him to put her arms around Will’s back. The breath she pulled in was long and shaky. The next one wasn’t much better. Will tightened his arms around her and tried to make sense of her panic. Jem had his hand on her back and she was looking at him without lifting her head.

“Will has been a part of everything in my life. Even the things that happened long after,” she trailed off, “I wouldn’t be the person I am, the person I became if not for our life.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Tessa,” Will said into her hair but Jem gave him a look that more closely mirrored Tessa’s anxiety and his confidence in the statement wavered. Because eventually he would. Even if it took another 90 years, eventually he would go somewhere else. When it happened, he’d take huge swaths of their lives with him. If she was right, he held all her memories of her children, all her memories of their life together, in his hands.

He met Jem’s eye and Jem gave him a tiny sad smile to tell him that he had reached the same conclusion. In any other life it might not matter. Spending a lifetime with someone to have your memories reset at the end of it all was far different than to have an eternity to live without them. Tessa’s immortality left her with far more to lose.

“Tessa, angel, look at me,” he said. She wasn’t crying when she turned to look up at him but her expression was pained. Will couldn’t find words that would fix it. He didn’t know what she needed to hear. He caught her face between his hands and his attention jumped to Jem for a second.

“There have been days in my life where memories have held me together. Lucie, Jamie, you. I don’t know who I’d be without you, without those memories,” Tessa said holding his gaze.

“We haven’t exhausted every explanation yet, Tessa, this may not be true, we’ve got time to figure it out,” Jem said to her. Will lay down so his face was level with hers. She nodded but none of them really doubted her explanation of the magic.

He was out of words but at least he could hold her close and safe. He wrapped himself around her and Jem pulled them back to bed. She settled in between them and fell quiet. Jem threaded his fingers through her hair in a repetitive motion that seemed to do more to calm her than anything Will could do.

“Some things cannot be erased,” Jem said, “Not even by magic, not even by time.”

Tessa nodded but stayed silent as she snuggled in a little closer like she could burrow herself into the moment and stay in it.  

 


	30. Magic and History Lessons

The New York Institute was a chaotic place on the best of days and this was not the best of days. Tessa paused in the doorway of the library and briefly considered just walking away from all of it. A very small voice in her head whispered that if she was going to lose every memory she ever had then what did it matter?

She shook her head and the voice fell silent. She wasn't a pessimist, it just wasn’t in her. She had learned a long time ago that each moment had weight and value on its own. Even death couldn't erase a moment that had been. Her life had been built around that understanding for close to a hundred years.

The prospect of losing it all terrified her, that was true. She had so many years to lose. So many moments. So many people. People she adored, people she had lost but never forgotten, people who would be gone if this was true. To have lost them was different than to have them stripped away from history as though they’d never been at all.

She looked at the room full of Shadowhunters and wondered how many of them indirectly owed their existence to Will being where he had been in history. If Will had vanished, there would be no Jace. Would Cecily have gone back to Wales? If she did, it would have rewritten the Lightwood family tree as well. That didn’t even touch on the history that would change.

Will's hand landed on her lower back and she startled. She hadn't realized that she had fallen still for so long. His eyes were dark and concerned and he stood too close for propriety. She worried about it for a moment but only a moment before she tilted into him and put her forehead on his shoulder. He wrapped an arm around her and she let some of her tension out. Anyone who cared could go straight to hell.

He stuck close to her as they found a seat beside Jem. Tessa took Jem’s hand off the table and held it tight. Will sat on her other side with his knee against hers beneath the table where no one would notice. They were keeping secrets but at least this one was a good one. No one got hurt because they loved each other.

She pressed her knee back against his and held Jem’s hand a little tighter before she forced herself to pay attention to the conversation. The arrivals were sharing notes about what had happened with Alison. They all remembered her older self but there was no evidence of her growing up that could be found anywhere. Jem had the reports of her disappearance in the 1980s sitting in a neat stack in front of him but absolutely nothing else.

“Don’t think of time as that static,” Tessa interrupted, “It isn’t like roads, it’s more like a tapestry. Each of us are threads being woven through one another’s lives and each thread may twist and turn and overlap the others but it they all travel in a straight line.”

“And we’ve become unwoven?” Edith asked from down the table.

“Yes, like a pulled thread on a sweater,” Tessa leaned forward and flicked her wrist to throw some magic into the air. Shimmering threads of light that overlapped in a simple weave. She pulled one loose in a loop. “If this is your string, you’ve been pulled out of your time and then reattached here,” she pulled the loop farther so it could be tucked back in higher up. The weave buckled a little bit at the bottom.

“So what’s happening at home?” Will asked.

“Nothing,” she said, “Maybe, it’s hard to say, it could be that when we pull the thread loose we create a new version of history,” she split her weave so that at the spot where the thread came out the fabric was doubled like two pieces seamed together. One that lacked the thread and one that had the out of place loop.

“Either way the two times are locked together. You are pulled loose but still connected to the past. You all still exist as you did. Jem’s found quite a few pieces of evidence. Edith’s marriage license is in that pile as are the names of Will’s children,” her voice didn’t waver when she said the last part but she felt Will shift just a bit beside her so he was fractionally closer to her.

“But when Alison died what happened?” this question came from Clary who had a determined look on her face like she didn’t understand this yet but she was sure that she could. Tessa smiled, she was always reminded of the demanding baby that Clary had been when she looked like that.

“Her pulled thread was cut and the snarl smoothed out, we were left with only one future,” Tessa said. Her little diagram removed its loop and smoothed back down to the single weave without the thread that had been Alison.

“She’s pulling them through time and then killing them off so that she can rewrite history?” Clary said.

“That’s the best theory right now,” Tessa said. “She lost someone and is trying to change enough history to stop their death from happening. It must have happened in London. I’ve asked some friends I have in the Labyrinth to see if they can find anything about the Zakarovs and in London in the last hundred years but we haven’t got anything back yet.”

The conversation spun on around them, full of theories and arguments about what to do. It kept coming back to the question of whether there was a way to preserve history as it was while still returning everyone to where they were meant to be. Tessa was only half way listening. Her mind turning over more personal questions.

She looked down the long library table where Shadowhunters talked back and forth and was reminded vividly of the days when she hadn’t been a visitor to it all. Once she had sat at the head of discussions like this, had been involved and included not as an outside expert but as one of them.

Clary got this look on her face sometimes that reminded Tessa of Charlotte. Iron and compassion and more than a little bit of temper. Jace was bright and bold and pulled attention whenever he spoke in a way that reminded her a little of Will and a lot of his father. Maryse presided over it all like a queen. She was one of those Shadowhunters who had never forgotten that they were gentry. Tessa didn’t like her but she had to respect the way she managed her Shadowhunters.

It was so rare to miss it.

She missed Will, missed Jamie and Lucie, Cecily and the roving packs of cousins that filled the echoing Institute halls with life but she rarely missed the job. Will had been Head of the Institute but she had been just as involved as he was. These were the things she would lose if the magic truly worked the way she thought it did.

The conversation finally wound down and Tessa wanted nothing more than to disappear back into some private corner with no one but Will and Jem. She pushed away from the table, stood and smoothed her skirt as they leaned into each other where she had been. They talked quietly. Their heads almost touched as Jem nodded at something Will had said.

“Can I borrow that one?” Lijing asked. In everything that had happened since the shooting Tessa was surprised to find that she was still there. Li was pointing at Will and raising her eyebrows.

“Why?” Tessa asked. She forced herself to smile and listen instead of simply saying no.

“I have a theory that the magic clinging to them isn’t actually a spell, it’s something to do with the way time is holding onto them. I just want to have a closer look,” she said.

“The last time we tried to take them outside, two people died,” Tessa said.

“I know, so we are not going to go out the front door. We can make one of your little portals, go out to the middle of the Gobi desert perhaps. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. Then we can send him back here where he is safe and you and I can go for tea or whiskey and you can tell me all about it,” she waved her hand at the two of them.

“If he’s willing to, fine,” Tessa said.

“Besides, I like Jian, I want to meet this new one properly. Is the new one the one you once did home renovation with in your pajamas?” Lijing asked in a whisper. Tessa laughed. She was startled by the reminder of the story. There weren’t many stories she shared about Will with people outside those who had actually known him but she had once told Li about their failed attempt to take down the horrible wallpaper in their bedroom only a few years into their marriage.

Will and Jem looked back at them as Tessa’s laughter settled back down. She waved them off. She was not going to explain it all with so much else going on. To Li she said, “Yes, he’s that one.”

“You have a type,” Li said.

Tessa laughed again. She had been wound so tight and letting go of even a little bit of that tension made her calmer. Will came over to stand beside her and she leaned into his shoulder and laughed again. It wasn’t hysterical laughter but there was a little current of desperation in it. She didn’t think anyone else could hear it.

“Tall, thin, dark hair, can kill you with his pinky finger, it’s a strange type, Gray. You should date nice girls,” Lijing said.

“Are you asking me out?” Tessa asked.

“I don’t date girls even nice ones and I’m not getting involved in all that,” she waved her hand at them.

“You think I’m nice?” Tessa asked.

“Not the point. Are we going? You, me, time traveling boyfriend, Gobi desert?” Lijing asked.

“I’ve never been to a desert,” Will said.

“Before this month, you’d never been farther south than London,” Tessa said.

“Not true, I went to Dunkirk once when I was 8,” he said. “It rained the entire time but that doesn’t bother the Welsh, we dry out when there isn’t enough rain.”

Will held her as he spoke like he was challenging anyone else in the room to say something. That little bit of possessiveness made her smile. Will had always made her feel safe. Always. Even when he had been a stranger the night they met, he had made her feel safe.

Jem appeared by their side and gave Lijing a big smile. They had a strange little friendship that seemed to be based on nothing but a shared language and that they both knew Tessa. She wasn’t sure they’d ever spent time together when she wasn’t there but knew that each of them considered the other a friend.

“Alec and Jace are going back to the nest with Magnus to see if we can figure out what it was meant to power. I was going to go along with them. Do you want me to come with you?” Jem asked.

“No, this won’t take long, we’re probably not going to find anything new,” Tessa said and Lijing made an offended noise but Tessa ignored her, “We’ll be back before dinner.”

“I’ll give you a call when we’re done and we can grab something to eat,” Jem said and he leaned in to kiss her. Will didn’t drop his arm from her shoulder and Tessa caught a look from Li when Jem stepped away. She ignored that too and gave Jem another kiss before he went to go meet up with Jace and Alec by the door. 


	31. Missing Things

Will was feeling a little bit like an experiment by the time Lijing and Tessa brought him back to the Institute. They’d tried to get the magic to flare up and it hadn’t. Lijing couldn’t get a read on it and Tessa’s ability to track a spell only worked on one that was active and this one evidently was not.

“It’s a little glow but there isn’t anything else. Nothing orange and bubbly like the little girl could see,” Lijing had said to Tessa, not to Will.

She and Tessa spoke a dialect of Mandarin that was so slang laden that Will struggled to understand it though he didn’t have any trouble with Tessa’s accent when she was speaking to Jem. Once she’d given up on the magic, Lijing taught him a few creative swear words and he traded them for a few choice phrases involving sheep in Welsh.

They had indeed gone out to a spot in a desert. It was a small town, surprisingly normal looking except for the odd camel to be seen grazing in sparse looking fields. Will had expected a town in the desert to be somehow more exotic and less mundane. Will didn’t ask too many questions about where they were or why. Rather than going out into the depths of the desert, they went for tea and when the magic didn’t react on its own, Li leaned over the table and sprinkled something into his and goaded him into drinking it.

“Tell me what it is and I will drink it,” he said.

“Your Shadowhunter is such a baby,” Li said.

“I am not drinking something red and shimmery without an ingredient list,” Will said.

“She probably doesn’t know,” Tessa said which set off a back and forth conversation that Will hadn’t been able to follow. He looked at the tea with it’s new sheen and drank it. He’d probably had worse. It made his tongue and then his skin tingle but hadn’t done more than that.

“Useless!” Li announced with a flourish. “You’re useless.”

“It isn’t my fault that your magic is inferior,” Will had said and it had made Lijing laugh. After that it was just conversation. They were old friends catching up over tea and biscuits that were flavoured like things Will had never eaten before.

After the tea was gone and the biscuits reduced to crumbs, Li announced, “I like Jian better but I can see why you like this one. He’s cute.”

“Thank you for your blessing,” Tessa said.

“Cute?” Will asked, “I think I’d rather not be cute.”

“Too late for that now, cutie, bye now,” Li had said before shooing them back to the portal.

“She was right, that was useless. I hope Jem has something better to report. I want this over,” Will said when they made it back to the Institute. He breathed in the cool air of the darkened stone room.

Tessa looked at him and he saw the question in her eyes. They’d stepped through into the foyer of the Institute and he laced his fingers with hers and pulled her up the nave of the church and into an alcove in the side. They found themselves standing in what had once been a confessional booth before the building had been converted.

“I want Zoya gone. I want to know that you are safe. I don’t want to have to worry about Jem getting shot with a rifle bullet again. I don’t want to leave you,” he said gathering her face in his hands and tilting her chin up so she was looking at him.

She nodded but said nothing. He could imagine the things going through her head about the things he would be leaving behind if he didn’t go back but the idea of walking away from the two of them was impossible. The decision had been made. He hated the thought of never going back but he couldn’t imagine leaving.

Her hair at the back of her neck was damp between his fingers from the heat of where they’d been and he could taste salt on her skin when he kissed her forehead. She lifted her face in a clear request and he smiled as he kissed her. There was no worry in this kiss, no fear that maybe he couldn’t have this. He kissed her slowly, pushing her back against the grate the priest was meant to sit behind.

“Forgive me father,” he muttered as he kissed his way down her neck. She giggled and held the back of his head.

“Are you going to sin?” she asked.

“Maybe,” he said pushing her shirt away so he could kiss her collar bone. He paused and looked her in the eye. Their bodies were pressed closer together. There was a faint soft smile on her face.

“How are you? You seem calmer,” he said.

“I am immortal,” she said.

“I know,” he said.

“There are always things to lose. If you have nothing to lose, then you have nothing that matters. I’d rather love and lose than give up the love. I will not give up this, you and him and us, to spend all my time worrying about it,” she said.

Will nodded and wasn’t quite sure what to say next. Tessa kissed him and solved the problem of trying to find words. He pulled her in closer, his hands on her hips then tracing up her sides. She tasted like tea and sweat. His hands made it to the hem of her shirt and then followed the lines and dips of her body up again, with his palms against her skin. She murmured and pressed closer and he couldn’t stop himself from smiling.

A door slammed and Will responded by grabbing the curtain, dusty and old as it was and pulling it closed without breaking away from her. She arched her back and pushed up to meet his hands as they came back to her body.

“Clary!” Jace’s voice rang through the church and they heard his feet pounding along the stone floor.

“Simon!” he yelled, “Where the fuck is everyone?”

“Something is wrong,” Tessa said and Will pulled her shirt back into place and nodded. He could hear the note in Jace’s voice as well. His feet had gone by their little hiding place and Will pushed back the curtain. Jace stood with his back to them, jabbing the elevator button repeatedly.

“What’s happened?” Will asked.

Jace actually startled. Will had never seen him look anything but calm and from Tessa’s expression, she had never seen it either. He wore gear and a weapons belt but wasn’t heavily armed. They hadn’t gone out expecting trouble.

“Have you heard from him?” Jace asked.

“Who?” Tessa asked.

“Zach,” Jace said.

“No,” Tessa’s voice was ice cold, perfectly calm. She pulled her phone out of her pocket but whatever was on it was not what she wanted to find, “He hasn’t called us. Where is he?”

“No idea,” Jace said with a touch of a growl in his voice, “He and Alec are gone.”

“Gone,” Will repeated and he heard Tessa’s flat tone in his own voice but something like panic built in his chest. He wasn’t hurt. Will would have been able to tell if he was hurt.

“He’s well,” Will said aloud as much to reassure himself as Tessa.

“As far as I can tell, so is Alec,” Jace said pushing the button again irritably, “Magnus got hit with something that knocked him out flat. Not dead but I think that’s only because the psycho bitch underestimated him. He’s with Catarina. I need something of Alec’s and a tracking spell now.”

“Why would she take them?” Tessa’s voice was wavering now. How did you subdue two Shadowhunters without killing them and take out Magnus Bane? The only explanation that Will could find was Zoya but even still it seemed impossible, even powerful warlocks had limits.

“She’s after him,” Jace said as the elevator finally dinged to a stop. It wasn’t big enough for three people but Tessa tucked in close to Will and Jace pressed his back against the grate to make room for them all. He was glaring but not at Will, just at the world.

“She thought Alec was me?” Will said. “He’s tall, dark hair, blue eyes, she doesn’t seem to me to be the most observant person in the world.”

“Where do we find them?” Tessa asked.

“And that is the question of the hour,” Jace said and it dripped with sarcasm.

Tessa was close enough to Will that he could feel her heart rate hammer. It was jackrabbiting against her ribs. She seemed calm but it was only held together by a thread. Will tightened his hold on her because she was the thread that was holding him together. Jace watched them but said nothing. Will could almost hear the questions he wasn’t asking.

“She hasn’t killed them,” Tessa said, “Which means there are still something she wants.”

“She’s going to ask for a trade,” Will said, “Killing Jem and Alec doesn’t change history. She needs me. I was a part of London’s history for years. Killing me rewrites a lot of history.”

Tessa changed. Her body tightened. Her shoulders drew in, her hand behind his back fisted into his shirt there. She was silent. Jace looked between them and the questions he wasn’t asking filled all the remain space in the elevator. It made it to the top and spilled them out in the hall.

“Why were you yelling?” Clary met them in the hall. She held Anna in her arms. The little girl lit up for a moment and then frowned. She had been expecting her father.

“A certain green friend of ours is causing trouble,” Jace said in a voice that seemed intended not to frighten the little girl but came out sounding more hostile for it.

“What kind of trouble?” Clary asked.

“The kind that requires tracking runes and some expediency,” Jace said. He softened just a little bit when Clary came to touch his face. Tessa immediately reached for Anna and Clary passed her over. She took the little girl out of the room. Will hesitated. He didn’t quite trust that Jace wouldn’t run off on some plan and leave him out of it but standing there while Clary tried to take the edge off his anger felt invasive. He went after Tessa and left them alone.

Tessa got the girl settled with Maryse without explaining anything. Then she pulled Will back to the room where they’d woken up together only a few days before. Once inside, her mask shattered and she sunk down to sit on the floor and pull in shaky breaths.

“He’s not hurt,” Will said kneeling in front of her. “I would know if he were. He’s not hurt. It is going to be fine.”

“We are getting him back,” she said.

“I know,” Will said.

“You are not sacrificing yourself to it. We’re getting him back without doing that,” she said in a low harsh voice.

Will didn’t answer her, he just looped his arms around her and pulled her in and rocked her in his arms until her breathing was normal again. She hadn’t sobbed but there were tears on her face when she pulled herself back together. It didn’t taken long before she was determined and focused.

“Let’s go find him,” she said. Will held out a hand and pulled her up to her feet. She dried her face and they went downstairs to find Jace and figure out what they were going to do next. 


	32. Plans

Magnus showed up in time for Jace to throw a book at the door. Magnus had an even expression on his face as he leaned out of the way and glanced at the spot where the book had bounced off the door frame. He turned back to Jace and raised his eyebrows. He was dressed in black jeans and a shirt that sparkled with some slogan picked out in glitter. If his make up wasn’t smudged he would have looked as put together as he ever did.

“Your tracking spell is going well is it?” Magnus asked.

“Nice of you to show up,” Jace sneered and Magnus gave him a look that was both expressionless and loaded with meaning. Jace sighed and said, “No it isn’t going well, I’m sorry,” like he actually meant it.

Magnus sauntered across the space and flicked a phone at the table like he was trying to skip a stone across a lake. His toss had a bit more style than Jace’s but it wasn’t any less hostile. It spun across the table and Tessa snapped a hand out and picked it up before it got to Jace. She glanced up at Will who was pacing by the window but the way he looked back said that he didn’t recognize it. It was Jem's. The plain case wasn't distinctive but she didn't doubt it.

“Where did you get this?” Tessa asked Magnus. After her little breakdown in Will’s arms she kept her calm. She met Magnus’s eye. She knew other people found those cat’s eyes hard to read but she could see the chaos in them. Losing Alec wasn’t something he could face any more than she could face losing Jem. Their gazes held for a long silent conversation.

“It was left outside my front door. I almost stepped on it when Catarina finally let me out of bed,” he said. “If you open it, there’s a video.”

She slid the screen open and her fingers only shook a little bit. The video was still open on the app behind the lock screen. She hit play and held the screen out so she could watch the jerky blurs of colour light it up.

“You’re really incompetent at this aren’t you?” Alec’s voice played through the speaker and Jace appeared at her shoulder to lean down over the table and look at the tiny screen.

“I could kill you now. It wouldn’t help anything but I could do it, if you don’t shut up,” Zoya’s voice said.

The screen played the image of a floor and a blur as she raised it up to point it at Alec and Jem. They appeared unharmed and looked to be simply standing across the room. It was a nondescript space, plain white walls, colourless blinds drawn over a window, that parquet flooring found in every low rent apartment building on the continent. Jem leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. Alec stood more forward. The camera wobbled and they snapped in and out of focus.

“Is it working?” she asked.

“Are you serious? We’ve been kidnapped by someone’s technologically incompetent Grandma. I’m embarrassed,” Alec said and he leaned forward so his elbow was braced above his head against an invisible wall. Tessa couldn’t see so much as a shimmer of light reflecting off of the barrier. It was solid and invisible just like that been in Venice.

“I do not want either of you. You’re annoying and useless,” Zoya said.

“Thank you,” Jem said and Tessa smiled at the screen in spite of everything.

“I’ll trade you for the Arrival. I want the other Shadowhunter. There is a Gala at the Museum with the stupid statues tomorrow night. We can trade there. Lots of mundanes so no one gets any thoughts about killing everyone. Everyone is just fine. I take my Shadowhunter, you take yours. It’ll be easy,” she said as though she were talking to them and they could see her. 

“Do you ever stop to think about the things that you say?” Alec asked.

“Quiet, or I will kill you,” she said.

“Didn’t you just promise that you wouldn’t? How trustworthy are you really?” Jem asked. Zoya huffed from behind the screen and the camera pointed down that the floor. It seemed to part of some sort of on going conversation. They had been needling her for awhile.

“I stand by my word,” she said, “I will not kill you unless I don’t get what I want.”

“And what you want is Will?” Jem asked.

“Yes, that’s his name, yes, I want Will. You bring him to the party and it will be fine,” Zoya declared then her voice was softer as she said. “How do I turn it off?”

“If you let me out, I could show you,” Alec said.

“I’m not stupid,” Zoya told him.

“Could have fooled me,” Alec said.

The screen shook and pointed at the floor then up at them and then she flipped it around and they got a brief view of her face before she finally turned it over. The screen went dark when she found the right button to end the recording. Tessa looked at the black screen and the replay symbol and steadied herself. She picked up the little device and held it between her hands because it was Jem’s.

Will had listened more than watched and he got back up and walked back to the window. Tessa watched him because he was thinking and she could almost hear the thoughts rolling around in his head. He crossed his arms, leaned against the window frame like he could hold it up and looked at her first before speaking to the room.

“What are we doing about this?” Will asked.

“Well turning you over would be something of a bad idea given that she wants to rewrite all of history,” Jace said, “But she’s an idiot so faking a trade might not be a bad idea.”

“She’s not nearly as stupid as she seems,” Magnus said. “She has been alive for centuries and there is also her brother to consider. We haven't seen him but he was there in Venice. Don’t expect nothing but impulse and irrationality from them.”

They argued back and forth. Magnus was increasingly hostile and Tessa was surprised that Jace didn’t seem to notice it. Magnus braced his hands on the table and leaned forward. She sat up a little straighter, not out of fear but out of a sort of respect. Old habits died hard and she still carried old manners. They had all had spent so much time with Mangus as the goofy dad with eye liner that it was easy to forget that he was terrifyingly powerful.

The problem wasn’t the question of breaking through the barriers, it wasn’t even a problem particularly of keeping Alec or Jem alive. The problem that kept turning around the table was the question of how to get Will out alive. Confusion was probably the best method but how to manage it was harder. Controlled confusion wasn't easy to manufacture. 

"Pull a fire alarm," Simon suggested. 

"You guys throw around some glamours and we clear out the mundanes with the sprinklers, not terrible," Jace said. 

“You can’t glamour a millenia old warlock, you can’t even glamour me,” Magnus said with dripping sarcasm. Tessa had been pretty certain that Magnus liked Jace well enough but even focused on the same goal, there were too many strong personalities in one room. They were devolving from discussion into just butting heads. 

“She doesn’t know what I can do,” Tessa said quietly during a lull in the conversation.

“You said, never, to that once,” Magnus said.

“This is something of an extenuating circumstance,” Tessa said. She had always avoided changes into those who were close to her. The ability to slip down into someone else’s mind was a useful skill when it was a stranger. It was intimate and invasive when it was a friend. Perhaps it was invasive for the stranger as well but she’d always allowed herself to forgive that in the face of necessity.

“We’re going to go there with two of me?” Will asked with a half smile on his face, “That might work. It would throw her off enough to get them out of there.”

If he thought of it as invasive or inappropriate he didn’t let on. Tessa looked at him and saw nothing but barely suppressed manic energy. Jace’s anxiety was all fire and rage, Magnus’s was ice and Will’s was something like a brewing storm: wind and chaos. 

“That’s not really a plan,” Jace said.

“So we make it a plan. We get a layout of the Gala. We get a Shadowhunter team in place to make sure there isn’t anyone with rifles waiting to shoot us. We get enough warlocks to know if there are spells being used. We make a plan,” Will said looking at Jace directly. The chaos was well reigned in. Other people couldn’t see it.

This was her Will. The one she had once sat and planned battles with. When he looked up it wasn’t as a boy with potential, it was as a man who lived up to it. Will never became the leader that Charlotte had been born to be but he was the kind of person who inspired confidence and that could lead all on its own.

As the discussions wore on around them, Tessa snuck off into a corner to grab Magnus’s arm. She pulled him in and held onto one of his hands. He pursed his lips but didn’t turn any of his icy sarcasm on her. He had long ago discovered that she was immune to it.

Magnus had picked her up when she had fallen to pieces after Will’s death. He’d been the one she’d called when Jamie had died and she’d found herself sitting in an empty apartment with the realization that she no longer had living family, she had descendants. Magnus had sat with her while she drew out the family tree, the complete one with every forgotten branch she knew about drawn out in detail. In the end she had come to terms with being someone's great great grandmother but no longer having any children to call or worry over.

He had it now. She’d sent the huge roll of paper to him after she’d added Alec and Anna in. She had listed him as her brother, not just a spouse on the Lightwood branch, and put an outrageous year as his birthday because he refused to give her the official date. She had seen it, tucked into a corner in his loft not too long ago. 

“How are you?” she asked him.

“Fine,” he said.

“Liar.”

“How are you?”

“Fine.”

“Liar.”

“It will be fine, we’ll find them,” Tessa said.

Magnus pulled her into a one armed hug but didn’t say anything. Jace called out a question about magic and Magnus pulled away from her to go and answer it. Tessa hung back from the group, making comments and suggestions from a perch by the window not at the table where everyone else sat. A table full of the descendants of people she had known once arguing and talking and passing maps printed off the ancient computer in Maryse’s office. She caught glances from Will when she was silent long enough to worry him.

Plans were laid and positions decided on. People were sent on heavily armed shopping trips. Phone calls were made. The proper people in the Clave were notified. It took most of the evening. It was late when they were able to escape to bed to attempt to get enough sleep to make it through the day that was coming.

“Do you need a friend?” Tessa asked Magnus and he shook his head.

“Anna’s with Catarina. I am going to go be with her,” he said. Tessa nodded and gave him a hug before he left the room.

Someone touched her arm as she watched the spot where Magnus had been a moment before and she turned expecting Will. Simon gave her an apologetic smile. She frowned at him for a few moments before she collected herself enough to return it. He said something reassuring and then he disappeared too. Tessa gave Isabelle a hug that wasn’t quite comfortable but both of them held for a long moment.

She finally went looking for Will. He was talking to Jace and they had surprisingly well matched expressions. Jem mentioned sometimes that he could see Will in Jace but Tessa rarely could. They looked like family in that moment. It wasn’t quite family resemblance but rather a shared pain and the same violent determination to get their parabatai back.

Will caught Tessa’s attention and left Jace with a very Victorian apology to come stand beside her. He didn’t touch her, there wasn’t much audience left but there was enough that he didn’t cross that line. With his lips pressed into a tight light and his posture straight and harsh, the age of his face couldn’t make him look young.

“This isn’t your fault,” she said.

“If I weren’t here, this wouldn’t have happened,” he said.

“That doesn’t make this your fault, there is nothing in this that you did wrong,” she said.

They were whispering to each other in low fierce voices. Will’s lips were a tight line and she could feel the tears burning behind her eyes again. She held a hand out to him. He wanted to yell. There was a part of him that hadn’t yet learned how to move beyond the urge to lash out. She could see it, understand it even but she wasn’t sure she could face it. 

He squeezed her hand and let her take him back to the quiet room which felt empty without Jem in it. She stood by the window and looked out at New York. There had been lifetimes she had spent without Jem but facing the idea of a night made her stomach churn.

“I’m sorry I was so angry, I didn’t mean to turn it on you,” Will said.

“You didn’t,” she told him.

“I know but I almost did,” he said.

“You did nothing wrong. In any of this,” she said.

“I know that too but if there was anything more I could be doing to bring him back, I would,” Will said.

He wrapped his arms around her from behind and joined her in staring out at the city. His chin on her shoulder and his hair against her temple and the smell of him calmed her. She inhaled and exhaled slowly, pulling in that smell.

He held her tight and she let her heart rate settle down. She wasn’t going to sleep much but she was infinitely grateful that she wasn’t alone. They curled into bed with skin against skin and whispered to each other as the night wore on and neither of them slept.

“He’s not hurt,” Will said more than once and Tessa kept a hand against the parabatai rune on his shoulder as they tried to drift off.  


	33. At a Party

Jem looked out over the crowd. He was pretty certain that he was invisible. No one had so much as looked in his direction in the hour that he had been there. The party was that very formal sort of event that always made him feel like it had been pulled out of time. The fashions were different but the feeling wasn't. Colourful dresses. Black suits. Everything brushed and tailored and carefully manicured from the people to the food that they ate.

He leaned against the wall of his little barrier and tried to quiet his fears. Will was at the center of most of them. Zoya truly had every intention, as near as he could tell, of making the trade. She was single minded in her determination. She didn't care about him or Alec or anything but resetting enough history to get what she wanted. She was almost a child. A violent and methodical child but he couldn't shake that sense of her as innocent and naive.

"You should let this go," her brother said while she was sketching out the plans she would use to make everything possible. Jem hadn't seen Dmitri in Venice but the broad shouldered, green man matched up with Tessa's description of him from the church. There was nothing childlike about him. He projected age the way Ragnor Fell always had. A very old man staring out of a youthful face.

"1878," she had replied with intensity, "The Head of the London Institute in 1878."

"You are going to bring the Clave and the Council down on us over one boy," he said.

"We have disappeared before and we will do it again. A chance like this won't come again. All the ripple changes that will come from this one person. It is unimaginable to let it go!" Zoya said.

"And if we end up dead?" he asked.

"We won't," she said, "Don't be a worrier. The Shadowhunters are only dangerous if they can catch you. We are faster than they are. Not to mention smarter and prettier. We kill him. We watch history change. We move on with our lives. If you don't like it, leave it to me."

"Zoyanka, you know I won't leave you to face this alone," Dmitri said.

That had been the night before and now they were here. He hadn't seen Dmitri but he hadn't been conscious most of the morning. Whatever anesthetic they had was powerful. His head still ached a little from it but his thoughts were clear. Every thought was about Will and how he could head off what Will was planning.

Zoya wasn't planning a switch of prisoners. She was planning just to shoot him and then release them. Simple and direct. All of the Zakarovs’ planning had been about escape routes. The actual plan was very, very simple and it made Jem's chest tight. Simple was harder to counter in many ways. If everyone else went in expecting an exchange of prisoners and the time and confusion of that, they'd never be able to stop it. Will would be gone before Jem had even had a chance to move.

He was prepared to do any manner of extreme thing required to keep Will safe but he hadn't any idea what it would take and his powerlessness left him silent and angry. Alec had let him fall silent. Jem retreated behind his Silent Brother mask and Alec had immediately stopped pushing for conversation. Jem felt a certain responsibility to him too but he’d been shunted off to some other holding cell and Jem couldn’t see him any more.

Jem hadn’t felt quite this helpless in a long time. There was nothing within his power to change. He crossed his arms, he relaxed his body language until he looked nonthreatening and then he leaned against the barrier and waited for something to happen while his thoughts rushed.

 

 

Tracking spells still weren't working and Tessa could see how much it was annoying Magnus. He had dressed up to fit in but the outfit lacked his usual flair. It was just a suit. A nice suit but there was nothing of Magnus in it. Nothing that shimmered. Nothing that drew the eye. Tessa stood between him and Isabelle who kept flicking knives between her fingers like she couldn't wait for the fight to start.

"That you two are so calm is freaking me out," she muttered.

"I am not calm," Tessa said.

"You're faking it well then," Izzy said.

"I’ve got practice," Tessa said in Will’s voice.

She wore Will's face. It was something she had never done. She had considered it once or twice but always stopped herself from so much as thinking the thought all the way through.

It wasn't a matter of just wearing his face. His mind, his sense of self, was right there under her own. Once it had taken effort to sink down into the mind of a change but now she had to hold herself on top, like walking over ice that was too thin. She could feel his thoughts and reactions below her own and it wasn't calming. His guilt, his worry over Jem, his explosive temper. They all lined up too closely with her own guilt, her own worry, her own temper.

She let her eyes wander over the crowd. Will thought like a warrior in a way she had once trained herself too but she had never been this good. He thought in strategy. She could feel those thoughts below the ice of his mind. He was planning out distances and routes that would get him up the stairs and to the wall without running into a single mundane, he remembered exactly where he, the real him, stood with Jace and Lijing. He kept the sight lines of the archers in his mind so that if he had to move, he could do it without crossing into their paths.

She had sunk down into those thoughts while she scanned the crowd hoping to catch a streak of silver hair somewhere. She pulled herself back out. It was too invasive to slip down into the mind of someone she knew that well. He had told her over and over that it was fine, that he had nothing he needed to hide from her and she could dig around as much as she wanted but it still felt rude. Magnus put his hand on her back in a gesture she wasn't sure he would have used for the real Will and she took a deep breath.

It had been a very long time since she had faced a battle where she had this much to lose.

"Are you ready?" Magnus asked.

"Yes," she said.

"Good because Clary just sent us a signal," Magnus said holding up his phone.

“Are you?” she asked. A huge portion of this plan hinged on him. She was a distraction. Will was a distraction. Magnus was the lynch pin in the whole plan.

“Yes, time to move,” he said.

If he’d received the message it meant that Zoya had been spotted. Probably by Simon and the Clave archer who were watching from the top floors. Beneath the chatter of the mundane guests, a fountain could be heard and Tessa looked towards it in time to see Will move out into the open.

Here was where it got complicated. The two of them needed to move in and out of glamours smoothly enough to make it impossible to figure out where he was in the crowd. She saw him wink out of sight by an elaborate punch bowl as Lijing cast an illusion for him to disappear behind.

Magnus nodded at her and she stepped down from the alcove on the stairs where they had been hiding and made her way directly towards the little stage where a string quartet had set up but hadn't started to play yet. She stopped behind the spell Magnus cast and spun around to see if she could catch sight of Will as he made the next move.

Isabelle followed along in a ball gown that covered her runes. She was spotting, watching to see where the danger was coming from. If Tessa lost sight of Will, Izzy was meant to find him. If a threat appeared, Izzy was the one to stand against it. Clary was in the crowd too and a few other Shadowhunters but Tessa didn’t look for them.

Tessa caught sight of Will moving again and he flashed a grin in her direction though Magnus's spell made her invisible. She was caught between the desire to grin back and the desire to slap him for making light of something like this. Will wasn't really making light, he was wrapping himself up in a sort of mad optimism that allowed him to throw himself into dangers that normal people would have run screaming from. He smiled again before he vanished and Tessa stepped out into the crowd to do the next pass.

 

 

Jem caught sight of him and almost swore aloud. He couldn't see Zoya. For all he knew he was completely unobserved but he forced his mask to stay in place just in case. Will wove through the crowd, eyes up, confident and purposeful. Jem caught sight of a bit of blonde hair and took a little bit of comfort in the fact that he wasn't stupid enough to come alone. Jem tracked him through the people until he lost sight of him behind a woman in a purple hat.

He didn't come out again and Jem scanned the crowd again. Nothing. He started looking wider. Looking for another glimpse of Jace or Magnus and caught sight of Will again. Far to his left. Too far for him to have covered the distance without running full tilt and vaulting at least one table full of champagne flutes. But no, he walked out into the crowd like he was just strolling.

Jem's already pained heart tightened farther because the only way that was possible was if one of them was Tessa.

They'd both put themselves squarely in the line of fire. He wanted to shake them even as he was immeasurably grateful that they had come for him. It hadn't been something he doubted. All his worries were about Will getting hurt in this attempt but he was still glad that he had these people in his life. It was one thing to know that he would risk everything for someone. It was quite another to know it was returned. He stood back from the edges of the barrier and fell into an easy ready stance. As soon as anything changed he would be moving.

"What's he doing?" The voice snapped Jem to attention and he swung a fist towards Zoya who had popped up just outside his little prison. He pulled the punch before his fist collided with the barrier and he broke his fingers. He was surprised by his own reaction.

"Trying to confuse you?" Jem suggested.

"Why do you people always make this so hard, what the hell kind of glamour is that?" she asked.

"I haven't a clue, you're the warlock," Jem said.

"Well he's not, how's he doing it?" she asked.

"Just so we're clear, I'm not on your side in this. I'm not going to help you kill him," Jem said.

"Don't you get that it doesn't matter? He's been dead for a century anyways! Why should it matter so much that he dies again? Dead is dead," she said.

Jem didn't answer her. The hypocrisy of the statement didn't bear pointing out. Jem watched as Will moved out into the crowd again, moving away from the landing to the closed second floor that Zoya had claimed as her look out spot over the party. She stomped her foot and glared at the crowd. Jem ignored that too.

He stepped back and whistled.

It was a stupid trick his father had taught him. He had taught it to Will when they'd been about thirteen and had just started sneaking out into London to run patrols they didn't have permission for. It wasn't musical whistling. It was just noise. A high sharp and very loud sound. Heads popped up around the room. He'd simply assumed the barrier would be soundproof until she started talking. A current of conversation ran around the room as the mundanes tried to figure out where the sound had come from.

From somewhere hidden, Will whistled back, just as high and sharp and distracting. Jem caught sight of a security guard start to move into the crowd, trying to find the person behind the disturbance so they could be removed. Jem didn’t have a plan for the whistle. He was letting Will know where he was but wasn’t sure that was a good idea.

"That's annoying, don't do it again," Zoya said and it was petulant more than anything else.

"Alec is right," Jem said and she looked at him, "Being captured by you is an embarrassment."

Then, because he wanted her as uncomfortable and confused as he could get her, he leaned towards her and did it again. This time the answer came from somewhere else in the room. Tessa returning it again.

They did it one more time, a long blast that bounced from Will to Tessa and back to him again while Zoya waved a gun at him and uttered threats he was pretty certain she wouldn’t follow through on

Jem saw Will step out onto the empty dance floor before Zoya did and his heart almost stopped. He couldn’t tell from a distance who it was but it didn’t matter. She turned and smiled like it was Christmas morning. She raised the weapon in her hand and Jem tried to pull her attention back to him but she ignored him.

Jem was too distracted to try to pick apart whether it was a glamour or a person in the middle of the dance floor. Zoya aimed carefully. She was behind whatever spell made him invisible too. They couldn’t see her. No one else could see her.

Jem whistled out a pattern. They’d learned all the official techniques, all the proper ways to communicate on the battle field but at that moment he could only remember childhood games. His mind was full of the sound of Will whistling out codes from Tower Bridge just so they could see how far they could go and still hear them. He could have yelled a warning but that might have drawn Zoya’s attention. He whistled out a code he had forgotten he knew. Hidden danger.

The Will on the floor straightened just a little bit and then chaos hit.

A fire alarm started to wail and the party goers started to move in a swirl of skirts and and shined shoes. Someone screamed.

Magic pushed in. Most Shadowhunters couldn’t feel magic but after all his time as a Silent Brother this was one instinct that held over. He felt the magic change. He didn’t know enough to know what it was doing. Like feeling air against your face but not being able to tell if it was a breeze or a fan or the start of a hurricane.

Zoya fired and the gunshot echoed around the space not quite lost in the fire alarm’s wail.

The other Will, Jem still couldn’t tell them apart, barreled out of a crowd and hit the one Jem could see around the waist and they both went down.

Jem started to move. There was instinct and training in his steps but it was mostly a panicked need to make sure that no one had been hurt. The barrier didn’t stop him. He stepped through it as though it were no more solid than air.

He heard a scream and looked up to see Tessa.

Will’s black suit, white collar, black tie but Tessa’s face and spill of brown hair.

She met his eyes and then everything shifted.

Pain laced across his forehead and his vision failed. He stumbled on the steps and threw out his hands to catch himself and thrown himself into a roll.

He lost sight of her as he fell.

Two figures in black, tangled together and then just empty floor space.

They was there then they weren’t.

Vanished in the time it took to blink.

The pain and the wetness on the side of his face demanded his attention as he hit the tile on his elbow and tried to turn himself but he’d lost the strength he needed for that.

All he could think was that they were gone.

Then everything went black. 


	34. Coming Home

Will hit the ground hard and his instinct to roll to his feet was stopped by the weight across his waist. He’d been knocked off his feet by Tessa. She had heard Jem’s warning and reacted hard and fast. Will had looked for her rather than getting himself out of the line of fire. It had almost gotten him killed. He had heard the gunshot but now he looked up and he couldn’t see where it had come from.

A moment later the wave of magic hit. He had been meant to draw attention to distract from this. Even though he knew it was coming, it still took him by surprise. He shuddered in revulsion at the feel of it crawling over his skin, over each rune like fingers dragged along skin.

Tessa sat up off him. When she started to swing her head around to look at the room she had black curls that fell to the nape of her neck, by the time she looked back her own hair was a tumbling down around her shoulders. The spell moved fast out to the boundaries before it bounced back and a second wave followed it.

Every bit of magic in the room had been flipped off like a snuffed out candle. Even the runes scrawled over his skin ceased to function and it felt like losing a part of himself. At least the spell would be short lived, minutes and no more. There wasn’t time to be lying on the floor. Will started struggling up.

It had taken most of the morning for Tessa and Magnus to draw out the spells and runes in permanent on dinner plates. Will had thought it ridiculous which had led to a lesson on how ceramic withstood magic better than paper and how the plates were easy to sneak into the party. Isabelle and Simon had placed them around the room while the tables were being set up and the centerpieces arranged. They were well hidden by the time the guests had arrived.

Magnus stood in the center of the spell somewhere, hidden from Will by the fountain but the effects stretched far beyond Will and Tessa. Up on the landing to the closed second floor, Magnus’s spell tore at a barrier of magic. The strangeness of watching a spell which was nearly but not completely invisible as it fell apart, made Will pause to watch.

Zoya appeared first like she was surfacing from water and she held a pistol in her hand. The warning whistle made sense. Jem had seen her before anyone else had. There were no riflemen and they had assumed at short range that she would have used a spell or called up another host of flaming demons but no, it was simply a pistol. All that magic Magnus was using and he’d still come far too close to getting shot.

Will heard a second shot as Tessa pushed herself up and he grabbed her around the waist before she could put herself in harm’s way. Jem appeared to Zoya’s left and he was already moving before the spell had completely vanished. Someone screamed and Jem’s step faltered on the stairs he was running down. Will was still holding onto Tessa but she pulled harder against him when she saw it happen.

Jem was bleeding.

She was struggling.

Then the world spun.

Magic crushed back in on them.

The spell should have lasted longer than this and even if Magnus had lost it early, this still wasn’t right. This wasn’t barriers coming back or Tessa’s change coming back or even his runes coming back to life. This magic pulled on them like a riptide. It pushed and wrapped and reached deep into him and pulled there too. Will fought against it in a moment of primal fear. It was like that time Ella had accidentally pulled him under while they were playing at the beach. It had the weight and the soft pull of water and his lungs burned for air.

He held on to Tessa as the pressure twisted and he still couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t even see. He tried to force his eyes open to catch sight of Jem. Jem had fallen and that was more important than this but he couldn’t push past the tightening hold of the magic.

It convulsed around them and then it shattered. It shattered like they’d been encased in glass not water. He gasped in air and Tessa rolled away from him and coughed. The floor under his hands was cold and he considered lying down on it for a moment but everything that had happened before rushed back to him.

“Will?” a voice asked and relief pushed everything else out.

“How badly are you hurt?” Will asked looking up at Jem who was kneeling over him. His voice was hoarse and sounded strange to his own ears. Whatever the magic was, he never wanted to feel it again. He coughed again and finally got his eyes open.

“Not at all, I’m not hurt,” Jem said. His eyes were bright and silver and familiar and wrong. He was too thin, too young, his hair shorter and nearly white in the witchlight of a stone walled room. Will pushed himself up and stared at him. Jem caught his elbow as he stood up and wavered on his feet.

He stared around the room. The museum, the glittering lights, and the party goers were gone. He looked towards where the stairs had been when the magic had closed and there was nothing there. Jem - the Jem he had seen fall - wasn't there. They stood instead in the Sanctuary behind the Institute. It was a room Will had been in a hundred times but it didn't look familiar in that moment. His eyes caught on the fountain where Tessa had tricked Mortmain into believing her dead though the water wasn't running. 

He was standing in the London Institute and he was staring at a 17 year old Jem Carstairs. His heart rate picked up and then stuttered. He couldn't find the words that would make it make sense. 

“Gwilym,” Cecily flung her arms around his waist and he was reeling but he returned the hug. He stared down at the top of her head but there weren’t answers in the dark braids. He looked at Jem over her head with a question in his eyes that couldn’t find the words to voice.

Tessa’s voice interrupted whatever he was about to say, “How did you do it?”

“You were touching him when the spell closed, it was accidental,” a voice said and Will could almost hear the shrug in it. He looked away from Jem and Cecily. His sister took a half step back as though only just noticing that there was a strange woman in a poorly fitting suit in the room. She stood on the flagstone floor near one of the pillars that lined the room and looked up at a very tall green man with pale hair and tiny horns rising from his forehead.  

Will had been surprised when he recognized Ragnor Fell’s voice but the man was tall and striking and unmistakable. His expression was aggravated and his arms crossed tightly across his chest. The High Warlock of London who had been dead five years, who wouldn’t die for more than a hundred. The strangeness of time pushed in on Will again. 

Tessa faced away from him. Her hair cascaded down her back and the suit hung off her shoulders and over her fingers making her look like a lost child in spite of her height. Her voice was tight and terrified as she spoke to Ragnor. Will was so disoriented it took him a moment to make sense of why she was so upset before it came rushing back in. 

Jem.

Will reached for the bond. Reached into that sense that told him where Jem was and could only feel the person beside him. He panicked and reached farther. Jem’s hand was on his arm, Cecily was asking him things, trying to get his attention back but he needed to know. He found the flicker, like a second line and grabbed hold of it with all the mental energy he could spare.

“How did you do it?” Tessa asked again, her voice angry and harsher.

“He’s alive, Tess,” Will said cutting into her conversation, “I can tell.”

She inhaled a long slow breath but didn’t answer him. She was still facing Ragnor and her fingers were held tight under the cuffs of the jacket. Every few seconds they readjusted, changing shape, moving in patterns. She was working some sort of magic but Will hadn’t a clue what it was.

“How are you doing this?” Ragnor asked.

“When the spell closes, history resets,” she said. “It changes from this moment forward. Will was holding the past and the present together. Now he’s here and this is the last link.”

“The two of you could argue like that for hours. No answering a single question, answering new and different ones in a competition of inanity over and over until we all run screaming into the streets,” Magnus said. He stood to the side near Charlotte.

Homesickness or maybe the relief of homesickness warred with the panic in Will’s chest as he let his gaze travel over the room. Henry stood to her side, a bit of grease on his cheek from some project. Beside them, Tessa, with her eyes wide and her mouth just a little bit open. He hadn’t realized she looked older now. Not by much, not as different as Jem did but enough that he could see the difference even if it was just in her bearing.

“Shut up, Magnus,” Ragnor said.

“I am blocking his spell from closing,” Tessa answered Magnus.

“If you’re right then you’re holding time in place, that’s a clever trip,” Magnus asked.

“It’s not an easy one and I’d appreciate you not distracting me,” Tessa said and there wasn’t as much humour in it as she usually had when she spoke to Magnus.

“I can’t send you back,” Ragnor told her.

“I know, we’ve been trying for weeks to figure out how to send someone back. It’s impossible to do with accuracy. I need to understand how you got him here. I want to know if you could bring someone else. He was hurt and I won’t leave him behind,” she said.

Tessa was holding on to an impossibility but he understood why. Every feeling that might have been relief or joy or gratefulness to be home was blotted out by the memory of black hair and blood and Jem falling. Will hadn’t seen him hit the ground, the magic had grabbed them before it could happen.

“Not unless he has another parabatai lying around. It could conceivably also be done with a vampire subjugate or some other magical link. It cannot be done with whomever you so please,” Ragnor said.

“So you could do it again?” Tessa repeated. She was not turning around. She spoke only to Ragnor as though no one else mattered but Will suspected she simply wasn’t ready to face the rest of the room and the magnitude of what had happened.

He was home. She was not.

“No,” Ragnor said.

“I just want Jem,” she said. Ragnor pointed over her shoulder at the Jem who stood at Will’s shoulder. He raised his eyebrows at Will in a silent question but Will couldn’t answer it yet. Tessa ignored the pointing finger. She didn’t turn as she said in a dark voice, “My Jem.”

“If it is the same person, you could probably do that,” Magnus said and Ragnor shot him a look like he’d said something traitorous.

“What is going on?” Jem asked in a low voice in Will’s ear.

“Yes, what is going on?” Charlotte said quite a bit louder.

Will spoke fast, “The short explanation is that I accidentally stepped through a portal created by a warlock attempting to rewrite history and found myself in the year 2014. You,” he said to Jem, “Joined then unjoined the Silent Brothers at some point between now and then and I am fairly certain that you got shot shortly before this portal pulled us through here.”

“Will,” Tessa said and Will glanced up at the wrong one. Tessa in her blue dress and carefully styled hair had come to stand beside Jem but she wasn’t the one who had spoken. Seeing them together brought up a memory of that painful feeling he used to have when they were together. It was just an echo. If felt like a long time ago. He turned around and looked at the Tessa who stood there in his suit with her hair falling all around her.

There was a question in her eyes. Her gaze bounced around the room too fast to do more than scan the details before they came back to him. They were too wide and slate gray like storm clouds, all the blue gone. Will wanted to make her promises but instead he told her the simple truth.

“He’s alive. It’s hard to tell any more but I would know if he wasn’t,” he said and checked on that connection that was stretched far too thin by time and magic and distance but wasn’t broken. She nodded and turned back to Ragnor.

Jem caught Will’s arm and Will smiled at him without any real humour. His attention was on Tessa and her suppressed energy. This was some place past fear. He wasn’t sure if she would be able to recover if they couldn’t get him back. He stopped his mind from asking the same question of himself.

“Very well but you will owe me for this,” Ragnor said.

“I will pay in money or those little toasted coconut sweets you like so much. Hell, I’ll pay you in absinthe if you can do this,” Tessa said. Ragnor tilted his head at her in consideration and Magnus let out a bark of laughter and a muttered comment about time travel. Tessa being friends with Ragnor seemed like an impossibility to Will but she was treating him much like Magnus was.

“Then give me my spell back,” Ragnor said and Will didn’t see anything change but Ragnor nodded at her and Tessa stepped back. This time Will did reach out for her and she came to lean against his shoulder. He’d adjusted to her easy touching but here, in a room full of proper manners, it felt like a scandal the way it hadn’t the night before.

No one said anything as Ragnor crossed the room and pulled an amulet off of Jem’s neck and dropped it on his. There was no explanation just a look of annoyance like they were inconveniencing him. He stalked back to his spell and the circle lit up. A dull orange glow that built to yellow as the power collected.

Everyone was silent. Tessa descended down into some sort of panicked calm. Will was aware of her anxiety but it didn’t show on her face. Out the corner of his eye, he could see the other Tessa looking at them but she too had been shocked into silence. She stood close to Jem and watched without asking questions.

Ragnor looked annoyed but didn’t seem to find the spell difficult. He waved his hands and the spell’s glow grew brighter and brighter until it was hard to look at. As it flared, Will could feel it. It grabbed at a piece of him too deep to have a name. Some bit of soul perhaps and it seemed to be trying to yank it out of him.

“It’s supposed to pull. It did it to me too,” Jem said in a low voice beside him. Some of the distress must have been carved into his face. Tessa’s locked gaze broke away from the spell to look up at him and he tried for a reassuring smile but it was hard to do more than grimace.

“It’ll crest and then break,” Tessa said.

“What does that mean?” this question came from herself and she tore her eyes away from the spell again to look sideways at the other girl.

“It means it will get worse before it gets better but it will get better,” she said and even to Will who had been speaking to her daily for weeks, she sounded old. He could see the alarm on Tessa’s face but the light and the pull on his parabatai bond crested just like she said they would. It went from an uncomfortable feeling of violation to true pain and then it was over. He fell back into himself as Tessa pulled away.

The light was gone. In its place, Jem lay on his back on the floor. His eyes were shut and his face was ashen. Blood streaked across one temple and across his cheek. It had been smeared past the runes on his face by a careless hand. He still wore the same simple jeans and t-shirt he had been wearing when Will had last seen him. It had only been a day but it felt far, far longer.

Tessa made it across the room to him as he started to cough. She caught his shoulder and rolled him back onto his back. She kept her hand on his chest as he regained his breath. Bloody but breathing and weakly waving away her concern. Relief like air washed over Will as he left everyone else behind and sat down beside the two of them.

Unfortunately, like Will, Jem hadn’t come through alone.

Alec had one hand on Jem’s shoulder and a stele in the other. The iratze on Jem’s skin where the t-shirt had been pushed up hadn’t even started to fade yet. Alec was coughing and shaking off the effects of the spell. He waved the stele in front of his face like he was trying to clear the air. His eyes opened and focused in on Will and Tessa first without going to the rest of the room.

“Where the hell did you two go?” he asked.

“Alec, I’m so sorry,” Tessa said and her voice was all pained sympathy. Alec looked around confused and then with dawning realization. He swore and sat back on his heels.

“Where are we?” Jem slurred out. The iratze was still working on his injury and he wasn’t very strong yet. Tessa sucked in air like she was trying to keep from sobbing in relief as she looked back down at him and away from Alec’s puzzled expression.

“Home,” Will said and he still wasn’t quite sure if it was the right answer or not. 


	35. Alec

The first time Alec had met Tessa, she had been introduced as an old friend of Magnus's and he'd had to push down the urge to ask if they'd ever been involved. In the years since that first meeting he'd come to think of that as a ridiculous question. There was something about their dynamic that reminded him of Jace and Izzy. Utterly devoted but completely unromantic.

She had become a part of his life as well. She had a place on the very small list of people he considered friends. It helped that Tessa had become one of his few reliable sources of information about Magnus. She'd laugh out explanations about why Magnus hated black liquorice because of a drunken bender involving absinthe or she'd whisper little not-quite-secrets that Magnus never thought to share. 

In the time he had known her, he'd learned that Tessa's attention would always settle back to the same place: Jem. He couldn't imagine her without him though he knew that she had lived for decades on her own. She was always aware of where he was in a room. Her eyes found him over and over again even during the course of a dinner or a conversation.

The arrival of William Herondale was the first real change Alec had ever seen in that. Now her attention found the two of them. They were almost always together so it didn't make her watching any more conspicuous. Other people hadn't noticed it. In a conversation with Jace about who Will was and how he fit, Jace had been surprised when Alec told him that there was some sort of history there with Tessa. He had thought it was obvious. It was more than the relationship with his parabatai's girlfriend though he hadn't had a chance to figure out what it was yet. 

Regardless, with both of them in the room, with Will looking baffled and shell shocked and Jem still bleeding, Tessa's attention should have been on them.

It wasn't.

She was watching him.

"Alec," she said again

"Clary was putting a call into the Silent Brothers. Izzy and Jace went after Zoya but I don't think they'll catch her," Alec said.

"It doesn't matter," Tessa said.

"It does matter," Alec said looking down at Jem who had wrapped his hand around Tessa's and held it against his chest. She was petting his hair on the uninjured side but her gaze still didn't waver. She was still watching Alec.

"We're not there any more. The spell could barely handle doing this twice. It took all three of us to keep it stable at the end there. We didn't lose you into the void but it's over. The spell broke. It's gone," she said.

"Spell," he repeated suddenly feeling stupid. He was missing too many pieces of the puzzle. He'd gotten so used to portals that blinking and opening his eyes somewhere else wasn't worth worrying about. This had not been a normal portal. Something was very wrong. He couldn't bring himself to look around the room though he was almost painfully aware of the weight of attention on him.

In a quiet even voice, Tessa explained where they were. Behind her, Will looked deeply uncomfortable. Guilty. He looked guilty and even that took Alec a moment to understand.  A portal that didn't just lead to a where but to a when.

Beyond Will was a boy with silver hair and girl with familiar eyes and they snapped into place for Alec. Jem and Tessa. Impossibly younger than he had ever thought to imagine them but still together. There were two of each of them in that room because of a broken time loop. 

"There's no going back," he said in a flat voice.

"The spell closed," an equally flat but more annoyed voice behind him said, "It cannot be opened again for all the coconut snacks in the world."

"History is rewriting itself from this point forward," Tessa said in a gentle voice as though an extra bit of kindness might help. It didn't. 

"So they've all vanished?" Alec said closing his eyes against a rush of images. Faces and even places flashed through his mind. Snagging again and again on black curls and blue skin and eyes that almost matched his own. Magnus had been at the center of the party. He'd been headed towards them as Alec had dropped down to see if Jem was still breathing. He had looked exhausted from whatever magic he had been using. Exhausted and relieved. Was he still standing there, staring at empty space? Alec suppressed a shudder.

"No," Tessa said sharply and he forced his eyes open to look at her.

"We're rewriting history. Jace is a Herondale. If Will's life is different, Jace might never even be born," Alec said. The words came out faster than his thoughts could travel. He scrambled for his parabatai link. He was stock still as he searched inside himself. It hadn't occurred to him to check it. It would be like checking to see if his legs were still there. There was no pain so of course they were still there.

Except it wasn't.

The link was. The tether still stretched out of him but there was no sense of anything on the other side. He carefully smoothed out his expression but the tangible proof of the wrongness curled in his stomach. It should have hurt.

Gone.

The link hadn't been ripped away. There was no sense of emptiness or the tug that some parabatai explained when their partner had died. Just stretching out into the ether and gone. Along with everyone else. They existed in a future that hadn't happened yet.

He wouldn't live long enough to see any of them again.

"Excuse me," he said and he pushed himself up. There was blood on the knees of his jeans from where Jem had bled out into a pool on the floor. The realization made him look down to check that he was still breathing. It felt immeasurably important that he still be breathing. Once he was sure that Jem was fine, that the wound was closed and even the redness fading, he turned to walk out of the room.

He wasn't sure where he was going. He had never been in the London Institute but even if all he found were long hallways of empty bedrooms to walk through, that would be enough to give him some time to think.

Standing behind him was Magnus and a tall green warlock with pale hair that he recognized only fleetingly, like someone he had seen in a photograph. Magnus was Magnus. Cat eyes and absurd hair and a well tailored suit. A different well tailored suit. Had he gotten caught in the spell as well? Alec was too shocked to respond to his first instinct collapse into his arms.

"Come here," Will said appearing at his shoulder and grabbing his arm. Alec was dragged past Magnus without so much as an introduction.

His mind caught up before he could embarrass himself with protesting. That was not his Magnus. He was something like a hundred and fifty years too early for his Magnus. Wrong Magnus. Wrong arrogant Herondale. Wrong century. No way home. Will was trailed by a girl who was a tinier female version of himself. Sister. He had mentioned a sister once. Alec spun. He walked forward. The world seemed to be in one piece but he was spinning inside his own head. Nausea rose and then fell back. 

"Cecily, this is Alec Lightwood, Alec, my sister Cecily Herondale," he said in one of those oddly formal moment he had. Alec nodded at the sister and forced out a smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"They got you home," Alec said to Will because it felt like a situation that needed words. He had always surrounded himself with people who spoke easily. Jace and Izzy and Magnus filled silences. 

"And I am deeply sorry that you got pulled along with me," Will said.

"Jem," Alec said his attention snagging on the literal and practical because he was too unmoored for anything else. He wasn't crying or screaming though, he noted that with a sort of clinical detachment that probably wasn't healthy.

"Because Tessa and I wouldn't let him go," Will said and that guilt was back. 

"Of course not, you love him," Alec said. Simple and direct and inarguable. If it had been the other way, he would have done the same thing. He was slumped against the wall with Will's hand still on his shoulder like he was afraid he would have to catch Alec when he finally fainted.

He had struck Alec when they'd first met as cold and distant but sometime in the last few weeks, he'd become warmer. He had been settling in. Alec met his eyes. Will had found a place for himself in a time more than a century away from his own. 

"I lost my daughter, my sister, my best friend," Alec said and he cut himself off before he could say the name that belonged on that list. He wasn't sure how long it would be before he could say any of their names aloud. Like naming the dead. No. They weren't dead, they didn't exist yet but that thought just confused him into shutting his eyes.

"I know," Will said.

"I need a minute," Alec said.

Will found him a room. He stopped at the first bedroom and pushed it open. It was unsettlingly familiar. The furniture was a a little bit of a different style from the rooms at the New York Institute but still heavy old wood. Even now it looked old.

Will turned to send Cecily off for someone called Sophie and there was a small brief argument in an incomprehensible language that must have been Welsh. Cecily huffed and left the room in a swish of skirts and tiny stomping feet. She must have been a terror as a little girl. 

Alec sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall for a minute before turning back to Will who leaned against one of the bed posts with his arms crossed. He was doing a very effective Jace impression and Alec had to smother that thought before it brought out the building stream of screaming or cursing or vomiting that was threatening in his stomach. He wasn't sure which it would be when it happened.

"You should go back to your family," he said. Will's guilt hovered in the room and Alec couldn't deal with it. 

"Cecily is the only family I've got," Will said.

"They moved heaven and earth, almost literally, to get you back," Alec said, "Blood doesn't make a family but that does."

Will looked at him like he understood exactly. Alec covered his face with his hands. There was blood on them. He dropped back onto the bed and tried to push back the painful thoughts in his head. A vivid memory rolled over him. Anna climbing up onto the bed and dropping herself down in the middle of his stomach and demanding things. He could almost feel the air being pushed out of his lungs as she pulled on his sweater and bounced up and down until she was sure she had his undivided attention.

The threatening feeling was suppressed tears. He was sure now. 

"Sophie will bring you something to eat. Come find us when you need us," Will said. 

Alec nodded but didn't move his hands. He waited until the door shut and Will left. Alec didn't cry, not yet, he just lay still and tried to manage the mad hope in his chest that said there had to be a solution and the pained pragmatism of having listened to Magnus explain why it was impossible over and over again since that night in Venice.

He sighed and swore but refused to let himself cry. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the only chapter in this entire story that isn't in the POV of one of the trio. 
> 
> Alec is going to get a little spin off - exploring adapting to 1878 and this Magnus who is so different from his Magnus and making friends with the Institute crew and probably the historic Lightwoods and once I've written it I will include a link here. 
> 
> Yes, I am leaving him here. Sorry Alec.


	36. Settling In

Jem squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled. The desk smelled familiar. It was a mix of scents he hadn't thought to remember until they were there. The heavy paper, ink, something floral that was probably a little hidden potpourri or maybe spilled perfume. He should have done as he was told and gone to bed to sleep off the blood loss. He had been determined to be in fine healthy, he was just tired and so he had refused to retreat into sleep. There was too much going on to sleep. Instead he had his arms folded on Charlotte’s desk in the drawing room and was half asleep anyway.

He heard the door open but didn't raise his head to check to see who had come in. There had been people in and out for the last hour. Charlotte asking questions as she tried to make everything make sense. Debates about what to tell the Clave. Magnus and Will having a brief conversation that had cut off when Will came over to check on him. Will and Tessa had bounced between worrying about him and worrying about Alec. It was unnecessary he told them but it never failed to make him smile each time one of them dropped a hand on his shoulder.

He listened to the sound of feet on the rug as she crossed from the door.   
"Jem?" she said as she sat down in the chair beside him and he reached out and laced his fingers with hers without looking up. 

She didn't pull away but she paused, almost frozen. He pushed his head up and it wasn't his Tessa looking at him. He let himself stare. He could excuse it as still recovering. She was younger. Tessa always looked young but there were still traces of the little girl in this face. Tessa Gray at 16, the way she'd looked when he first fallen in love with her. Her face a little rounder, her expressions not as carefully guarded, a strange mix of iron resolve and childlike innocence. He smiled and squeezed her hand and then let it go.

"How are you doing with this?" he asked her.

"It is unusual," she said with a wry little smile.

He smiled at her and they sat for a moment. Jem sat up straighter, pressed his shoulders back against the chair so he wasn’t slouching. He studied her and the little expressions that chased across her face. She had so much ahead of her and so much of it was things Jem wished he could erase for her. She leaned forward and started to reach a hand out. To touch his hair or the runes he wasn’t sure because she tucked them back into her lap again. Her fingers hesitated in the air then pulled away, her face colouring just a little bit like she'd been caught doing something wrong.

"Ask me anything," he said.

"You're not sick," she said which wasn't a question but a statement so he waited for her to put all the questions together in her head. It took her a moment where she glanced away and then back again. She raised her fingers like she would touch his face but again stopped short of it before continuing, "Are these part of the cure?"

"I was a Silent Brother," he said in a soft voice. She fell back into her chair. Her expression barely changed but she seemed to crumple and he reached out for her hand again. She held onto his fingers this time, curling hers tight.

"You aren't a Silent Brother now," she said.

"No, but I was for a very long time," he said.

"What happened? I thought you could not be one of them, you told me that once," she said.

"It was a risk. It was unlikely that I would survive the runes and the rituals of the Brotherhood but I got lucky," Jem said and she nodded as she thought through what he had said. She thought harder than most people. She considered and questioned and he found himself enjoying this proof that that had always been true. It was that his Tessa was an immortal with lifetimes behind her that made her considerate and curious, she simply was.

"Then what happened?" she asked.

The door opened behind them and interrupted the question. Jem looked away and realized he hadn't so much as glanced down at the table since he'd looked up at her. She was baffling. Tessa and yet not Tessa as he knew her. 

His Tessa was the one coming through the door with both Herondales in tow. Cecily had been following Will around like he was about to vanish on her again and he swung between teasing her and seeming genuinely pleased each time she reappeared at his side. Will and Tessa were talking and Cecily looked like she wanted to interject but was trying not to be rude. Jem smiled at them and he knew this smile was different than the one he had given the girl beside him.

"What are we talking about?" Jem asked.

"The Clave and whether what Ragnor did was illegal," Will said.

"Was it?" Tessa asked and Jem looked at her. He was going to have to start paying attention to the accent because he had been surprised to hear her voice coming from beside him instead of from the woman still standing in the doorway.

"Probably," her other self said with a shrug and Jem turned his attention back to her, "The statutes on dimensional magic are vague and broad, it would depend on the lawyer studying them. You could make the case that it was and you could make the case that it wasn't."

"Do you spend much time reading the Clave's statutes?" Cecily asked.

"We went through everything the Clave had on this kind of thing, including the law, while trying to figure out how Will and the others had gotten there. So many pages and nothing. You'd think they couldn't possibly be that dull and yet somehow they make interdimensional travel dull. It's a particular ability of the Clave," Tessa told her with a laugh.

"Jem was going to tell me what happened," came the voice from beside him and Jem forced himself to turn to look at this Tessa so that he didn't get confused again about who was speaking. Jem caught her expression and the look that passed between her and Will and suddenly understood the weight of the question. It wasn't just Tessa's insatiable curiosity.

"It isn't something repeatable," Jem said softly as the others found seats. Will and Cecily on a sofa not too far from the desk and Tessa on the desk itself.

She pushed back a stack of book so she could sit near him. Her body language was stiff and defensive and she kept doing little things like this, sitting up on the furniture, leaning back against the walls with her arms crossed tightly against her chest, even just refusing the change out of the suit. She was distancing herself from where they were and who she had been. Jem hadn’t realized how much harder this was for her than it was for him.

He hesitated for a moment before he stood up, reached across the desk and pulled her down into his lap. She laughed, sharp and startled before she let her head drop down against his shoulder. He held onto her and ignored everyone else. There hadn't been a chance for this since they'd come through the portal and holding her helped sand the last of the edges off his anxiety.

"Everything will be fine," he said into her hair and he believed it though he wasn’t sure that she did but she nodded. The way she leaned in made him certain that she understood him and what he was trying to tell her. The silent message that she was safe and protected and a promise that being here didn't mean giving anything up. Jem looked back up at everyone else and set his chin back against her hair. Tessa looked confused, Cecily a little embarrassed and Will amused. Jem caught his eye and he flashed a smile before leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

"So you were talking about that time you caught fire," Will said which further broke Tessa's tension as she curled a little closer to Jem and laughed.

"That's a vast oversimplification of what happened," Jem said but he couldn't keep his own smile off his face.

"Right, I apologize, one of my descendants was set on fire by his girlfriend and then he set you on fire. It wasn't just spontaneous," Will said, "That's about how I remember it being explained."

Tessa laughed harder which made the other version of her stare openly. Ladies did not curl up in the laps of men, even men they were married to, and laugh like drunken sailors. Jem was torn between feeling the need to explain her behaviour and the desire to just join in with her torrential laughter in the face of all those proper manners. He was still just smiling and watching when she got a handle on her giggling.

She leaned forward to explain what actually happened to herself. Will interrupted with another comment about catching fire and she picked up a heavy crystal paperweight and threw it at him. He caught it easily out of the air as she turned back to Tessa. Jem could only see the back of her head but he could see every expression on her younger self's face. From that side, the story was painful. 130 years and not a piece of his miracle cure repeatable. Jem held onto the woman in his arms just a bit tighter even though she wasn't the one who needed comforting.

"Where did I go, other me?" Jem asked Will when all the explanations were finished and the younger Tessa's questions had dried up into a frustrated look of deep thought. He wanted to turn the conversation to just about anything else. It would give her time to think. It would save anyone saying something to make it worse.

"I think he's avoiding you," Will said.

"Ah," Jem said.

"Have you considered that you should probably finish drinking whatever foul but healthy thing Sophie brought you and go to bed?" Will asked.

"He's looking much better," Cecily said and when Will gave her a look like she was being traitorous, she turned to Jem and said, "Well, you are."

"Thank you, and this is truly foul," he said looking at the half finished mug on the table.

"You almost died, James," Will said and there was a weight in his name that Jem could almost feel. He had the inappropriate urge to push Cecily out of the way so he could wrap himself as tightly around Will as he was around Tessa. Cuddling Tessa in public was inappropriate but manageable. Cuddling Will was a different story. Still the weight of the words had an intimacy in them. There are more than three words to use when saying "I love you" and Will had always been better at them than most people.

"I am just fine, it barely even scarred," Jem said.

"Inches to the side and it would have killed you," Will said.

"But it wasn't inches to the side, don't do that thing you do where you drown yourself in what-ifs," Jem said, "There are enough things that have actually happened to worry about without the the things that didn't happen."

Will sat back, tossing the paperweight from hand to hand as he stared at Jem like he could glare him into going to sleep. It was about to become an exercise in absurdity. Jem finally shook his head and threw up his hands.

“Fine, I will go to bed,” he said.

“Charlotte had a room made up,” Tessa said crawling off his lap and holding a hand out to him. He took it and made a show of leaning on her and pretending to be wounded. Will chucked a pillow at the back of his head and Tessa stopped to pick it up and fling it back. They left the room to the sound of Will’s laughter.


	37. Hopes and Homecomings

Rain poured down outside. London lived under a constant drizzle but this was a true summer storm. It rained like the world needed to be cleansed of its sins. Will found Jem watching it from the covered walkway that ran out from the sanctuary toward the old ruin of the rectory behind the Institute. The courtyard was overgrown and the rain had puddled into the uneven paving stones. It might have been a desolate place but the warm air and the smell of earth smoothed out the feeling. 

Jem’s silver hair was the only thing that made him visible. Will paused in the doorway to stare at him. He was as he had always been but spending time with the version of him who wasn’t dying made it so very clear that this person was. He wasn’t just narrow, he was painfully thin, he leaned against the pillar to take some of the pressure off his joints. He was so pale that he looked ghostly.

Will was surprised when it was anger that rose up in him. How dare the lines of fate do this to him? That he would someday get his health back didn’t matter. He was dying now. Will had never made peace with it but he had given up raging about it years before. It hit him anew. The rage was back and he had to swallow it down as he skirted puddles and listened to pigeons coo from the rafters above them.

“Are you glad to be back?” Jem asked without turning to look at him.

“Immeasurably,” Will said and it was almost true. He felt disoriented. He had imagined, if they had sent him home, that it would feel like slipping back into where he belonged but now he was here and instead it felt like he had come back the wrong shape. Everything was exactly as he left it and he wasn’t the same.

“You were gone longer than three days,” Jem said.

“It was weeks,” Will said.

“I thought so, you’re too different for only three days,” Jem said.

“I’m not different,” Will said.

“If nothing else, you’re happier, and that’s different,” Jem let out a breath. The air around them was warm and damp and Will could feel his hair frizzing and plastering itself to the back of his neck at the same time. He ran his fingers through it and tried to come up with an answer. It was true but he didn’t know how to explain it.

“I didn’t notice,” Jem said, “I couldn’t see it. I was too wrapped up in my own concerns, in my own happiness, to see how miserable you were until now. Until you came back like this.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Will said turning to stare at him. Of all the things he had expected, Jem feeling guilty had not made the list.

“I should have noticed,” Jem insisted.

“And I should have noticed when you fell madly in love with Tess,” Will said and Jem didn’t react to the nickname though he had turned to look at Will in the gloom, “I should have noticed that you were thinking of doing things like joining the Silent Brothers. You’ve thought about it haven’t you, even now?”

“I had thought…” Jem trailed off and tried to restart the sentence a few times before he said, “I have, yes, but I had imagined it almost as a different kind of death. I would become one of them and live out my existence in the Silent City. I had never imagined coming back just as I have never imagined coming back from the dead.”

“You make coming back sound like a horror. Isn’t it better?” Will said.

“I don’t know, to spend a 100 years waiting, never accepting it, never letting go, lifetimes waiting on a fantasy life?” Jem’s voice was soft.

“At least, it’s a good fantasy,” Will said.

“And they just adopted you into it, didn’t they?” Jem said. Will laughed because he still wasn’t sure how to put into words just how far into that fantasy life he had been pulled. Instead of explaining that, he leaned his shoulder into Jem’s and took a deep breath of that burnt sugar smell and the smell of the rain and half rotted leaves blown into the corners, and explained everything else.

Will spun stories making the worst of it into an adventure and the best of it into a comedy while they saw on the railing, rain dripping down their backs as they ignored it. It was late. Will had heard the bells somewhere in the city chime midnight. He hadn’t slept properly since Jem had been taken and he was exhausted. It didn’t matter because they had been laughing and Jem asked unusual questions about things Will hadn’t considered. He didn’t want to go to bed.

He told stories of Zoya and the church fire, he talked about Alec and Jace and the strangeness of finding his own name on history books. About Tessa arguing with Simon. He tried to describe driving on a highway but couldn’t come up with a way to put that kind of speed into words. When he got up to the story about the Barunka Nest he stopped dead.

Jem was snickering over the end of the last story and didn’t notice how still Will got. He turned to him as his thoughts moved far too fast. Jem glanced over at him and misinterpreted his expression in the dark, “You’re exhausted. Go to bed, you can tell me about the rest of it tomorrow.”

He got up to leave, tottering just a bit as his muscles readjusted after sitting still for so long. The rage in Will’s stomach came back. It wasn’t fair that he was so sick. He turned and grabbed Will’s shoulder with more strength then it looked like he would have and Will pushed the anger down. He had long ago made the decision to never think of him as an addict or an invalid and he wasn’t going to change that now.

“I’m glad to have you home,” he said.

“I’m glad to be here,” Will said.

Jem gave him a smile in the dark and then pulled him off the railing and pushed him toward the door. The rain had started to slacken but Will found the silence of being inside unsettling after the constant drum of raindrops.

“Go to bed Will,” Jem said, “Don’t go out and wander the city tonight.”

“No where else I’d rather be,” Will told him and with a smile, Jem turned and headed back towards his room. Will turned and went the other way. He had chosen a bedroom as far from the rest of them as he could. The initial room Charlotte had given him when he’d arrived was up on the same floor where Jem’s was but he’d abandoned it in favour of this distant, dark corner of the building.

He stood in the doorway and looked at the room. It was cleaner than he remembered. Probably Sophie sublimating worry she pretended not to have into picking up all his discarded clothing and haphazard piles of books. He touched one of the bookshelves by the door and had an unexpected moment of longing for the pile of glossy comics Simon and Tessa had foisted on him.

He had never been happy in that place.

The room had been a shrine to how unhappy he was. Messy and impersonal and darker than it needed to be. He stood in the door and stared at the neatly made sheets and the blanket tucked in around the edges. He found himself wishing he had thought to put art on the walls or had bought himself a rug. This place had books and clothing and nothing else. He had told Jem there was no where else he wanted to be but he hadn’t meant this room. The room made the feeling of being out of place worse.

He closed the door and went upstairs instead. He wasn’t sure exactly where they were. He pushed open half the doors on the third floor but he found them. Asleep and cuddled together. Tessa had her head against Jem’s shoulder and his face was turned into her so his lips were against her hair and it stirred a little as he breathed.

The out of place feeling faded. This room was even less personal than his. It didn’t even have the books. He leaned against the door frame and smiled at them. They weren’t the same as the Jem and Tessa sleeping in other corners of the building but just seeing them made him feel better. He could have both. He could have this two people to curl around and spend slow mornings with and still have his best friend, his sister, a life he understood.

“The default is always come to bed,” Tessa had said before and he let those words play through his mind as he closed the door behind him. He padded across the stone floor as quietly as he could and ran his fingers down Tessa’s cheek. She tilted her head up off Jem’s shoulder and smiled at him with half open eyes. For someone with all that power and that flash point temper, she looked remarkably soft edged and gentle blinking up at him like that.

“Can I?” he asked in a whisper.

She smiled a little broader and reached up to touch his face and nodded. He found another set of pajamas in the wardrobe and climbed into bed behind Tessa. She lay on her side with her head pillowed on Jem’s shoulder and Will fit himself in behind her. She cuddled back against him and he reached past her so that he could put his hand on Jem’s stomach and feel him breathing.

“Can I ask something?” Will asked once he was as close as he could get, he spoke into her ear.

“I don’t know if I can,” she said understanding him with an ease that surprised him. He could have been asking about anything but her thoughts went to the same place that his did when it came to Jem. He didn’t need to explain to her how hard it was to see Jem in the throes of his illness. She understood it and she understood what miracle he wanted to ask her for. He had seen her do it. He had seen her break the hold a demon drug had on a person. In that stinking house, full of rotted corpses that weren’t dead yet, she had performed a miracle.

She had been doing it for twenty or thirty years but Jem had been a Silent Brother and it wouldn’t have worked on him. That explanation and the way neither of them seemed able to speak about it directly without pain kept playing over and over in Will’s imagination. Because this Jem, the Jem who had just rolled his eyes and laughed at Will’s stories was not a Silent Brother, was not on his death bed, though he kept drawing closer.

The tenuous hope that she could work that miracle for him crashed around Will’s chest like he’d locked something big and dangerous in with his heart.

“Would you try?” Will asked.

“If it fails, he’ll die,” she said in a voice that was below a whisper and drowning in emotion. If Jem died, she would blame herself for it for the rest of her life. He held her a little tighter and was about to apologize and let the question go as impossible when she said, “But that isn’t and never was, my choice to make. If he wants to risk it, if there’s a chance he could survive it, I would try.”

Will nodded but didn’t risk speaking. Jem had slept through the whispered conversation. Will could feel his chest rise and fall under his hand and he slid it higher so it rested over his heart because every steady beat was a promise. It was a promise Will was trying desperately not to tether everything onto because if it failed, he wasn’t sure how he would survive it.

He buried his face in Tessa’s hair and let himself melt into having them near. Hope was not nothing. It still felt too big and too dangerous inside his chest but he wasn’t able to let it go. He fell asleep still lost in thoughts of fantasy lives and losses too big to be comprehended.


	38. Who She Was

Tessa reached up to play with her hair and was reminded that it was pulled back neatly in a proper twist. She had dressed that morning with Sophie's help. It was alien and disconcerting and it was made worse that she was dressed in her own clothing. She remembered this dress. The thread in the sleeve that she had meant to fix was there, brushing her wrist just as it had when she’d been a girl. 

She had considered arguing for keeping the suit but Sophe had taken such pride in dressing her up and giving her a hairdo fit for a married lady. The fight had seemed futile and unnecessary. She had made only a few demands. The largest being that by the standards of the day her corset was barely laced. Even still the boning and the layers of fabric left her feeling trapped.

She was caught by a powerful, crushing wave of homesickness. It had taken decades to detach herself enough from this life to learn to be someone else. It had been a slow process but she had learned it, had learned how to be a warlock, how to be alone, how to live in a world that was unrecognizable to the one she was now standing in.

She hadn’t done it out of hate.

Some immortals did. Some immortals threw themselves at the future like it could replace the past they hated. She hadn’t thrown herself into new fashions and new modes of living because she had hated this one. The first years after leaving England had been lived on the brink. She had been utterly unsure of who she was without Will, without the friends who had been with her through everything, without a life she had loved for so long.

The desire to wrap herself in the past and her memories was so strong it had overwhelmed her sometimes. The future had seemed impossible and cruel. It was a feeling like being attached to the back of a train while it dragged her to places she wasn’t sure she wanted to be. She had found her feet. She had taken hold of herself and her life and figured out where she wanted to go.

It had taken time and work.

She had boxed up her life. She had chosen the pieces that she would carry with her and she had put the rest aside while she threw herself into the future. There were times when she had made a mess of it. The pain of Paris as the depression dragged the mundane economics through the mud and Prague in the 1970s after Jamie’s death had been the worst of it. But she had found her way out.

She ran her bracelet through her fingers. She had carried it with her for more than 100 years and now she had carried it back here to the building where he had first given it to her. It was one of the piece of the past that she refused to let go of. Now all the rest of the past was pushing in on her in unmanageable waves and it was almost suffocating.

Staring out the window wasn’t helping. From here she could see the wall that Lucy had broken her arm falling off of at 10 years old. There was a wave of memories waiting behind that one, of first steps in the grass and first words in the nursery and first heartbreaks spent curled in the library. She tried to ignore them but they were almost better than the conversation she was about to have.

She was waiting on Will to finish talking to Jem, with his silver hair and his life being lived on a ticking clock. She could imagine the conversation being full of Will’s desperate hope and she wondered again, for the hundredth time that day, if she would be able to live up to it.

Will had whispered it into the back of her neck in the dark. He’d whispered a wish for a miracle and she had told him maybe when perhaps she should have said no. Doubt twisted in her stomach. That she had slept at all was incredible. If she hadn't been tucked into the space between them, wrapped up in warmth and steady heartbeats, she wouldn't have been able to so much as close her eyes.

She ignored the near silent approach of footsteps until he was leaning against the window frame beside her. For a moment she had thought it was Will but Will didn’t move like that. Alec was more self contained than Will. He didn’t take up space in the room the same way. She knew he could command attention but he could also vanish in a way Will had never mastered. The dark hair and the blue eyes weren’t enough to make them look alike.

He wore a t-shirt and borrowed trousers that had come from a suit that Tessa recognized vaguely as being Henry's if only because they had a pattern to them that most people wouldn’t wear in public. Alec was all legs. He had probably been one of those clumsy coltish children before he had grown into a Shadowhunter. Magnus claimed he was still clumsy but she had rarely seen it. That thought made her chest hurt and she turned to look at him instead of London.

"Sophie's in a right state," Alec said with only a bit of sarcasm on the old fashioned phrase. He was evaluating her as he spoke as though he wanted to be sure he was talking to the right person.

"It's probably because you're out in public in that shirt," she said.

"The waistcoat that goes with these pants is lime green, even Magnus wouldn't wear it," Alec said and he buried the expression so skated across his features and vanished before it could become identifiable. “I’ve never worn a waistcoat in my life, I’m not going to start now.”

Tessa smiled at that. She had been planning a similar type of rebellion but she didn’t currently have a single piece of modern clothing that fit. She was entertaining fantasies of shopping trips that brought home things nice ladies simply wouldn’t wear. She had no money, no time, no idea where one bought trousers tailored to women in 1878.

“I don’t know how to be here,” she admitted.

“You grew up here,” Alec said.

“I did,” she said and then paused, “And I grew away from it. This was who I was for a lifetime. That girl, I was her and I was everything she imagines herself to be. I was a wife and a mother and a Shadowhunter. I was a lady with all the manners and restrictions implied by that. I was happy here. In this building, I was happy for a long time. And then I outlived it. The world, the manners, the people, their children… my children.”

Alec was silent and she went back to starring at London with a mad desire to see a flash of red as a city bus trundled by outside the Institute’s gates. Her eyes tracked up to the skyline and the lack of chrome and glass against the foggy sky made it something out a half forgotten dream made vibrantly real again.

“It hurts to stare at the past you loved, the past that made you who you are, the past that you aren’t a part of anymore,” she said.

“At least you got to live it all,” Alec said and surprisingly it wasn’t bitter, just sad, “I had forgotten you had children, I knew that because Magnus always called you for baby advice. I guess you don’t even have any pictures of them any more.”

“I do,” she said then laughed a little because she wasn’t prepared to allow herself to fall into the threatening grief the way she was already trapped in the melancholy. The laugh was forced and Alec answered it with a half smile.

She patted his arm and considered not bringing it up but something about his expression made her say, “I think I have more pictures of your daughter than mine. Photography wasn’t common back then.”

“You have pictures of Anna? Here?” he asked and there was a note in his voice that Tessa felt like a knife. His pain was worse than hers. His was all new and still sharp edged.

She had her phone. It had been in her pocket throughout the battle and the portal. That and two pieces of jewelry were the only objects she currently owned. Will had Jem’s because it had been decided that if they got separated, he’d need a way to get into contact. They had a pair of cell phones in a world without electric outlets. She had been carrying hers around with her like a talisman or maybe just out of habit. It was sitting in the pocket of her dress and she pulled it out now and passed it to him.

“7909,” she said.

“What?” he was staring at it like it was a relic of immense power.

“That’s the password to open it,” she said.

“Once your battery is gone… I don’t think they have charging cables here,” Alec said.

“There are spells to charge batteries,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. Run the battery down, I don’t mind.”

“Thank you,” he said and then he left before she could see the emotion flooding his face.

He passed Jem on his way out. Her Jem, wearing Will’s clothes that didn’t quite fit and were in styles Jem wouldn’t have chosen. Jem’s suits were usually simple. He didn’t go in for dramatic fashions. Jem didn’t say anything to Alec, just nodded at him. Jem understood the expression that been on Alec’s face even if he didn’t know what had put it there.

He came to take Alec’s place but watched him until he had disappeared. His expression was even but a little worried. Alec didn’t know it yet but he had found himself a new guardian angel. Without Jace and Emma to worry over from a careful distance, Jem was going to need someone new to play guardian angel to. His expression when he watched Alec was the same one he had gotten on his face when Emma had done something rash and unexpected. Worried and fond.

“Are you worried?” she asked him when he turned to look at her.

“No,” he said.

“If I kill him…” she started but she couldn’t finished it and Jem reached out and pulled her in to his arms. She pressed her forehead into his shoulder and tried not to ruin all Sophie’s work on her hair by burrowing in. Jem looped his arms around her and she immediately felt more like herself.

She paused to unbutton his jacket so when she looped her arms around his waist, she could feel the warmth of his skin through his shirt. She held on tight and he returned the embrace. His anxiety was tightly buried in a way hers wasn’t but she could feel it just under the surface. It made her calmer to know she wasn’t the only one. She wasn’t alone. He was as worried as she was, as tense as she was, as lost as she was.

“If you think it is too dangerous, if there isn’t a chance, then take the offer back,” Jem whispered, “But if there is a chance, you know that’s what they would choose. It’s a risk they would take. Trust me, he has spent months forcing himself not to examine the future too closely and to put as much happiness as he can into what he thinks of as all that is left.”

“And if I take away all that is left?” she said.

“If I had to put my life in someone’s hands, I would choose you,” he said into ear.

“I am risking your life,” she said.

“I am risking my life,” he said, “Or he’s risking his. I had hoped for a long time to go out fighting. Withering away always seemed like a worse choice. I could have gone off and lived in a convalescent home in Idris or among the mundanes and I would have lived a longer life but I never wanted that. I would rather lose my life fighting for it than have it fade away.”

“You didn’t fade away,” she said.

“No,” he said, “I fought in every way I had. I just never had this choice.”

“You think I can do it,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, “I believe you can and I know that he will fight until the last breath for even a shadow of a chance at the future. This isn’t an empty hope Tessa. It is imperfect and it will be painful but someone once told me not to question the shape of miracles when we are given them.”

She smiled weakly and rested her cheek on his shoulder. When she heard the door open she squeezed him a little tighter for a moment and took a deep breath of the smell of his shirt front before turning to see Sophie looking embarrassed to have walked in on them. She stepped back from Jem.

“Master Will was wondering if you could meet him down in the drawing room,” Sophie said in a stiff bit of formality that stood at odds with how Tessa remembered her. Sophie Lightwood had always been proper but Tessa couldn’t remember her as stiff. But then, she also couldn’t remember Sophie’s maiden name. How many other things had she forgotten as inconsequential over the years? She remembered Sophie’s wedding and remembered the lady’s teas they had had over the years. She knew that Sophie liked raspberries and anything with chocolate but she couldn’t remember her last name.

Tessa said something proper and polite and let Sophie lead the way out of the room and downstairs to a conversation she was woefully unprepared for. She took Jem’s hand as they walked and let herself feel some of his faith.


	39. Build a Miracle

Jem watched himself sit down with a sense of deja vu. The way he moved, to favour his weaker joints without letting anyone see he was favouring his right ankle or his shoulder, was something Jem had almost forgotten he had ever done. He looked down at his own hands and stretched them out. He sat back, behind the desk again and the little twitch was invisible. His fingers didn't ache, his joints didn't protest, the lines of scaring from training and battles and faded runes were more prominent when his skin wasn't the colour of ice. He’d gotten so used to these being his hands that when he turned his attention back, the hands wrapped around the old dragon headed cane didn’t look like they had ever belonged to him.

The boy he used to be shook silver hair out of his eyes and looked over at Tessa, his Tessa, who sat beside him with her back straight and her face serious and his hand in hers like she couldn't bear to let it go. Their gazes held for a moment and Jem's eyes flicked up from the couple to Will behind them. In that moment, Will was made of dangerous hope and it was scrawled all over his face.

"How much did Will exaggerate?" his younger self asked in a soft voice, his hand tightening on Tessa's. If Will's hope was dangerous, his was fatal. Losing this hope, losing this chance after having it dangled out in front of him was going to break something in him. The thought made him feel ancient and strange because Jem didn't think the boy knew he still had it in him to break.

"A little, probably," Tessa said with a smile.

“I did not,” Will said with enough mock petulance in his voice to break some of the tension that had been building like a storm in the room, “I explained it as you explained it to me.”

"You might have left out exactly how dangerous it is,” she said. He frowned but didn’t immediately start to argue. After seeing him in jeans and t-shirts, Will in his suit and cravat, even untied and his collar unbuttoned, was taking some readjusting to.

"He told us about the man who died. Is it worse than that? How dangerous is it?" the younger Tessa said and her voice was shaky.

"Very and your chances aren't good. Without Catarina here to do an assessment it is hard for me to say for sure but you're probably a four," she said. She sat across from the couple and Jem couldn’t see her face from where he sat behind her but he could see how everyone else responded to her. Jem’s puzzlement and Tessa’s fear and Will’s deep but carefully masked concern.

"A four?" Jem asked with a smirk.

"It's easier when you're talking about life and death to reduce it down to metrics. I don’t usually when I’m speaking with patients but I want you to understand all of this before you make any choices," Tessa said and Jem's smirk fell away and his expression mirrored Will’s concern.

"The possibility of survival for this patient or that one are all mapped out by real doctors, not me. I usually don't meet anyone Cat ranks lower than a six and even then, their chances aren't good below an eight."

"So it's madness, an impossible risk?" he asked.

"It depends on how hard you are willing to fight and how much being a Shadowhunter makes a difference which I don’t know,” she said, “It's a treatment and it's only a treatment of one thing," she said stepping around the question like it wasn't something she could look at, "The yin fen has done real damage to you and nothing I can do can make it better. Your lungs will remain damaged, your joints will remain weak. And this thing I can do, will make it all worse."

She had been fiddling with a string in her fingers and reached out and took his hand. His expression changed imperceptibly and even though it was his own face, Jem couldn't quite say what the expression was. Tessa barely touched him, like it was an invasion but she pulled his hand out in front of her and he held it where she put it.

"As you take a demon drug the magic winds through you," Tessa said wrapping the string around his finger, "and the more you take the more purchase it has, it becomes a part of you bit by bit," she wove the string between his fingers as she spoke. Everyone was watching her like children at story time with their eyes on the teacher.

All her previous unease and all her worries were gone. She was pretending to be calm and confident. Jem knew it was a lie, he had felt it in her before but she had locked up all her emotions and she was treating him like any other patient. She was distant and professional.

"This end is anchored," she said pulling on one end of the string so the weaving tightened, "The demon is pulling energy into itself from you down the lines of magic. If you stop taking it, it keeps pulling until you are drained. If you keep taking it," she loosened the string in her other hand and fed it into the tangle around Jem's pale fingers so that as she tugged on the other side, the string could move, "Then it gives you enough energy to keep it balanced but it also-" she stopped.

Jem's expression had gone flat. Tessa looked up from her little display and said rather than asked, "Will left that out."

"That thing is feeding on me," Jem said. Though his voice was even something ran just below the words, fury or terror or revulsion or some mix of the three.

"Yes," Tessa said in that soft, professional voice. The string was still held between her hands, wrapped around his and starting to cut into his fingers. His one hand was extended towards her and the other one was tangled up in his fiance’s lap.

Will came and sat down beside Jem at that. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t apologize for leaving that out or attempt to explain anything. In a perfect moment of being William Herondale, he sat down and rested his shoulder against his friend’s so he knew he wasn’t alone. That one little gesture reminded Jem of everything he had ever loved about Will.

"It is feeding on you an that is what I can fix. It’s all I can fix but that is the thing that makes recovery impossible for you right now. What I can do is break the link but that means this happens," Tessa said after giving everyone a moment to take in that new information.

She let go of the long end of her string and grabbed the tangle around his hand and pulled it loose. It had left red marks along his skin though they faded away as they watched. "It is possible that after so long, the magic is so twisted up in you that pulling it loose will do too much damage to your heart or your lungs or something else unfixable that I cannot begin to understand. Even with help of the Silent Brothers, you may not survive it."

His response was immediate as Jem knew it would be. He could remember that same moment of physical revulsion. The thing that had killed his family and ruined his life had been using the drug to drain his energy. His life had been tied to it for decades. He had learned it long after becoming a Silent Brother. He hadn’t thought his frozen body would be capable of nausea because it wasn’t capable of eating but that piece of information had made him feel sick.

“I would rather the chance at a full life, even a slim chance, than to spend the rest of my existence as a shadow. I stopped looking for a cure because there wasn’t one,” his hand tightened on the Tessa who was sitting beside him and he looked at her before he looked back to the woman in front of him. It wasn’t the whole truth, he left out the revulsion that ran deep enough to be felt through the glass of the brotherhood. He had once had to remind himself that cutting it out wasn’t physically possible.

Jem’s voice held none of that emotion as he spoke with his eyes trained on Tessa’s face, “And there isn’t anyone else I’d trust more with my life.”

“Tell me when you’re ready, we can call the Brothers and find out how much your heart can take,” she said.

“He has the strongest heart of anyone I’ve ever met,” the younger Tessa said with that fierce protective determination that Jem had always been surprised and thrilled to find hiding behind her smiles.

“I know,” Tessa said and Jem could hear the smile in her voice.

 

What followed was flurries of conversation and not much action. Tessa had to explain it all over and over again to Charlotte and Henry and then again to the Silent Brothers. Jem could almost feel the anxiety washing off of her by the time she was onto her third explanation. She was composed and fielded each question without so much as a waver in her expression but he knew her better than they did and it wasn’t invisible to him.

Jem stepped in and pulled the Silent Brother Charlotte had called to help verify all the details out into the hall and explained the worst of it himself. He always found talking to the Silent Brothers uncomfortable but this was Brother Ezra and Ezra had died during Sebastian’s raid on the Silent City. It gave the conversation an extra layer of surreality.

The muted curiosity of speaking to someone who had left the Brotherhood was there in Ezra’s voice though he didn’t ask the questions. Ezra had less personality than most of the brothers and Jem suspected he had been dull when he was alive as well.

Ezra took the younger Jem had gone off to have his lungs tested and evaluated. As soon as he was gone, Will very carefully and very gently chased everyone away from Tessa. He dissuaded her younger self from asking questions, he convinced Cecily and Charlotte to leave her alone. He even managed to get Henry to discuss his theories about her particular type of magic with the Silent Brothers instead of with her.

Jem helped but this kind of management of people was Will’s talent. He told them all to get the hell out without making them feel so much as inconvenienced. It was something he had been exceptionally good at as an older man and Jem was a little bit surprised to find that skill in him this young. But then, driving people away nicely wasn’t that much different from driving them away harshly.

Once they were alone, Tessa’s professional veneer shattered and the terror and concern in her eyes was staggering. Jem locked the door before he caught her face in his hands and kissed her forehead. She inhaled slowly a few times and got a handle back on her emotions. The usual demon drug breaks, the ones she did regularly, exhausted her emotions but never left her this fragile.

There were men in the world who found fragility appealing but that had never been what drew him to Tessa. She was his warrior woman. He leaned his forehead against hers until her breathing was even again. Tessa didn’t break. Even at her lowest points, she always pulled herself back together.

Will had kept his distance while other people were around. All that tenderness hidden away so they wouldn’t have to explain it to anyone else. But without the audience Will had folded himself around Tessa. His arm around her shoulder, his mouth right beside her ear as he whispered calming things into her ear.

“There is more to life than not dying, you know that and you know that I have always believed that,” Jem said tilting her face up to look at him. “You have not lied, you have not misled, he is making his choices and so must you.”

She frowned and closed her eyes, he waited a moment for her to look at him again. When she did he said, “Are you willing to try this?”

Her voice was calm but her expression was still troubled when she said, “Yes.”

“Then we build a miracle. He has a parabatai, he may even technically have two because he’ll be able to pull on my strength through Will. He’s a stubborn bastard and the Silent Brothers are the best in the world at what they do,” Jem said.

“Build a miracle,” Will said, “I like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A special note of thanks to Gidge for helping me sort out the younger selves and which Jem was saying what.


	40. Recovery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the length of time between updates. 
> 
> This story has decided this isn't actually the end (I thought I had 2 chapters left) and we need to add an entire extra event in order to get to the proper conclusion I want.

Will sat with Tessa at Jem's bedside. She held his hand in hers and the Silent Brothers were still lingering. Jem was still breathing but no one would declare it a success until he woke up. His heart had stopped as Tessa had warned it might but they had started it beating again. Now he was pale and his breathing was shallow and laboured. Runes were scrawled across his arms and chest and the room smelled of herbs and something acrid that might have been magic. 

Will could remember the death of that man in the rotting house that smelled of gore and a very different sort of magic. It had been instantaneous. Alive and then gone. Jem was still alive. That was enough hope for him to cling to. If he wasn't dead, then recovery was still an option. Will had spent half the day with his hand in Jem’s in hopes that the extra bit of contact could make the parabatai bond stronger and help guide him back. As soon as the Silent Brothers had allowed her in, the younger Tessa had taken Jem’s other hand and refused to let go.

The little infirmary beds creaked if you moved but Jem hadn't so much as twitched a finger since the Silent Brothers had dragged him back from the edge of death with magic and medicine and things Will couldn't being to understand.

"You can feel him through the parabatai rune," Tessa said breaking their silence.

"Yes," he said.

"Do you think he will recover?" her voice was strained and when she looked at him, her eyes were wet and glossy. She wasn't crying but she was hovering on the edge of it. He reached out a hand to her and she took it. He had a moment of disorientation where that familiar sense of being on the outside of the two of them warred with the newer feeling of being a part of them both.

This was Tessa as a girl, not someone he had ever curled himself around like she was just another part of himself. He had never whispered against the back of her neck or felt her laugh with her face buried in his chest. These two weren’t his to hold but they were still his to protect.

"He didn't die," Will said, "He's gotten nothing but stronger since the Silent Brothers started their efforts. He's too stubborn to die."

Tessa laughed but it was short and breathy and almost ended in a sob. Will squeezed her fingers before she pulled her hand back. She was a different person than she would be after living lifetimes. He could see the warlock queen in her, the powerful demanding woman with the soft smile and the inarguable tone but it was hidden beneath manners and doubts he hadn't been able to see so clearly before he’d seen her after they were gone.

"I've can't remember if I ever said it plainly," Will said after a long silence in which they just watched Jem’s chest rise and fall, "But know that I'm sorry for everything I said on the rooftop that day. It feels like a lifetime ago though I know it wasn't. I'm not sorry because it might have made you think ill of me. I wanted you to think ill of me. I am sorry because it made you think ill of yourself. I was a monster to have done it no matter my intention."

"Will," she said in a soft voice and he couldn't say exactly whether it was his words or her worry over Jem but the tears were running down her cheeks. He leaned over Jem and wiped one away with his thumb. He forgot for a moment that she wasn't his Tessa and he drew away immediately.

"Never doubt that he loves you," Will said, "Never doubt that you are worth loving. He will recover because he is too stubborn to leave you. He cheated death once, in another life, he cheated death to come back to you and he'll do it again."

Tessa nodded and squeezed her eyes shut when she asked, "Are they happy?"

"They're embarrassingly happy," Will said with a smile.

"I'm sorry for all the times it caused you pain," she said.

"You needn't be. Your happiness, their happiness, doesn’t come at my expense. I promise you that. If I could have called down a wish, it would have been this one, that he have his life and you have someone who could love you the way you deserve to be loved. I couldn't have wished more for you," he said.

In a distant future, she had told him a secret, had whispered to him that she had loved him even as she had refused him and sent him away with wounds that wouldn't heal. He looked across Jem at her and he could see it on her face. That love that she couldn't feel. That love she had turned her back on when she'd made her choice. He wanted to say something to ease the expression in her eyes but everything he could think to say just made it harder.

"I will come right back, send for me if anything changes," Will said and he reached across Jem's body to touch her hand one more time. Maybe he was running away from the feeling but he imagined he was giving her the space she needed. He gave her a smile that she returned briefly before turning her attention back to Jem.

Will slipped out of the room and went upstairs. Tessa, the older Tessa who had spent the morning prying magic out of Jem’s body in a process that seemed to hurt her almost as much as it hurt him, was curled up in the bed. She was asleep. Will lay down beside her and watched her breathing. When her eyelids fluttered, he pushed her hair back from her face.

“Jem?” she said in a blurry whisper.

“Alas, it is only me,” Will said and he was rewarded with a smile. She reached out and ran her hand down the side of his face. There were moments like this one where he expected jealousy to be lurking and was surprised over and over that it wasn’t there. He was the person who had spent half of his childhood battling jealousy each time Jem had spent an afternoon with someone who wasn’t him. But that had been a case of other people. He remembered Jem explaining that the three of them weren’t other people and that made it different.

“How is he?” she asked.

“Still asleep but the Silent Brothers say that he is stronger now than he was even an hour ago. They aren’t promising a recovery yet but he’s still holding on,” Will said.

“If he’s made it this far, he’ll make it,” Tessa said with a smile.

“No one else is that optimistic,” Will let a little bit of his doubt into his voice. Jem in the throes of fever was never perfectly still. He coughed and he thrashed and he flinched away from anything cold. When he fell still, he was always in danger. The boy in the infirmary bed hadn’t moved at all since he lost consciousness during Tessa’s procedure. Will wouldn’t be calmer until he was moving again.

“I was afraid his lungs would give out. Collapse or become so damaged they couldn’t pull in air. That didn’t happen. He’s still breathing. His heart is still beating. Everything else is just recovery. It will take time but he’s through the worst of it,” she said and let a smile cross her face. Will answered it.

Once she’d been a girl full of questions, trying to collect everything that could be known about everything. And now she was the expert. She had become knowledgeable the way Magnus was. He trusted that she was right simply because she had said it.

“How about you? How are you?” Will asked.

“Tired but nothing worse,” she said.

“Where did your errant husband go?” Will asked.

“Charlotte wanted to talk to him,” Tessa said, “Go check on him, he’s pretending to be fine and it makes me nervous.”

“You don’t want me to stay?” Will asked.

“No, Angel,” she said reaching out to run his hair through her fingers and smooth out the unruly curls though it didn’t do much to help, “I just need to sleep. Go keep an eye on everyone else. They need it more than I do.”

He kissed her. Slow and lingering and felt her smile against his mouth before she gave him a little shove. He pulled away but didn’t move away.

“I accepted once that there was no such thing as miracles. I had believed that there was no one out there to save us but there’s you. His addiction, my curse, all of it comes back to you,” Will said.

“You give me far too much credit,” she said.

“And you give yourself far too little,” Will said and he kissed her again before she could argue. He paused in the doorway to look back at her as she cuddled back down into her blankets. She didn’t look powerful or miraculous. She just looked like a girl. Maybe to the rest of the world that was all she was but she was so much more than that to him. He smiled one more time before closing the door softly and going to do as he had been bid and look in on everyone else they cared about.


	41. Meetings with Old Friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to apologize, again, I think there is one of these apology notes on the last ten chapters. But this story has been fighting me on what is coming next and what issues still need to be resolved. It has been painful to even consider writing. The next chapter is written as well at this point. I am going to put this on an update schedule from here until the end. I am going to update on Saturdays. Next Saturday is definitely going to happen which gives me 2 weeks to write the chapter that comes after that and ideally I can keep my lead and keep the updates rolling.

Tessa knocked on Alec's door and waited for a long time before he opened it. He blinked at her a few times as though surprised to find her there. He wore a loose white shirt instead of his t-shirt and he crossed his arms over his chest as he looked at her. She wore a walking suit she had borrowed from her younger self that she didn't have any recollection of ever owning and itched around the collar. Neither of them were quite comfortable and she took some comfort in being able to share that.

"Is everything alright?" he asked, "Did something happen to Jem?"

"No, he's fine. He's been sitting up and talking all morning. Tessa, the younger one, and Will have been up there since breakfast. But I'm going out, I thought perhaps you might like to come," she said. 

"Just to tour London?" he asked. 

"I have an appointment with Magnus which you are welcome to come to or I can leave you glamoured in Hyde Park and you can just get a feel for the city," she said. Alec stared at her like he wasn't sure how to put words together into sentences. She continued, "Either way you're going to need to wear something appropriate for London in 1878. Put on one of those suits I am sure they found for you and meet me downstairs." 

"If you were me, would you go?" Alec called after her as she turned to walk down the hall in a swish of skirts. 

"You saw how often I was there when Will was staying at the New York Institute," she said. 

"That's not the same. An old friend... It isn't the same," he said. 

"It's exactly the same," she said, "That's the secret. The thing the three of us left out during every conversation with anyone who didn't already know. I married Will when we were barely old enough to sign the papers. I spent a lifetime with him and he died an old man. That portal dragged him back across time and space and dropped him into my life again and I am still trying to make sense of it all. I understand what it's like to look at someone who knew you better than anyone else ever could and have them see you as a near stranger." 

Alec stared at her. It felt good to explain it. She had a pang of guilt for never having explained it to Jace. It didn't feel so complicated or difficult when she said it like this. It was just a list of facts. A list of things that were true. Alec nodded and told her to give him fifteen minutes. 

Alec met her near the front doors and she started by sending him back for a hat. Once he had finished grumbling about dressing like the monopoly man, she adjusted the mess he had made of his cravat. She had rarely seen him in a suit. Jeans or gear or an ill-fitted sweater. He looked good but not at ease. His hair had been combed but it hadn't quite helped but the hat would cover the worst of it. Besides, he was handsome and the suit made him look rich, London society would write off everything else as a quirk. 

Jem came bounding down the stairs just as they were finally ready to go and skidded to a stop beside them. The great staircase that swept up from the entrance of the Institute was one of the least church like structures in the place, it looked like it belonged in a palace. It was made of the same heavy dark stone as the walls. The carpet runner was navy blue. Jem, at least when he was bouncing around like a kitten, didn't fit on it here. She reached up to run her fingers along the runes on his cheek bones when he came to a stop beside her. He was near manic energy today and she grinned at him.

"You're in a good mood," she said. 

"I am," he agreed, "I wanted to catch you before you left."

"I'll be back by tea," she said. 

"I know," he said and he kissed her. Alec awkwardly drifted away and then right out the door. Tessa suppressed a chuckle and Jem kissed her again. 

"Just so you know, if it changes anything, I told Charlotte about Cadair Idris and once Gideon is back from his sister's and has had a chance to read over her plan, they're going to take it to the Clave. We likely won't need Magnus's help on it but you might want to warn him," Jem said. 

She smiled at kissed him again. He hadn't run down here to tell her that though she was glad of the information. All her memories of Cadair Idris were tangled up in the change into Ithuriel and the night with Will. So many other details had fallen away over the years until it was just those two events and then a haze of fear and horror. She'd let the other details go. She knew what had happened but the entire experience felt like it must have happened to someone else. 

"See you for tea and talking strategy for storming a mountain," she said with a last kiss and then she left him smiling after her and went out to meet Alec. 

They walked to Woolsey's townhouse. Tessa had looked up the exact location on a map and decided that forcing Alec out into the sunshine was worth the distance. Of course it was London so it wasn't sunny but at least it wasn't pouring rain. She kept up a running commentary because it reminded her of things she had forgotten and because it gave Alec something to think about that wasn't where they were going. He had asked a very few small number of questions about Magnus and Woolsey and where Magnus was in his life at that point but then he'd fallen silent on the matter. 

London bustled. Carriages and handcarts and hundreds of people selling things. All kinds of things. From flowers to furniture to hats and wedding gowns. Voices and wagon wheels and horses hooves on dirty cobbles. She had let the past fade and to have it brought back to roaring life was incredible. London had never been quiet and stayed. The old daguerreotypes from the Victorian era made everyone look so calm and collected but the truth was nothing like that. It was brighter and dirtier and louder than she had expected. 

"Are then any rules of the road?" Alec asked as she pulled him across a broad street and they had to hop out of the way as a carriage lumbered by. Tessa laughed at that. She didn't know the answer. If she ever had, she had forgotten it. She had only ever driven a carriage in a moment of distress and the rules of the road hadn't mattered at the time. She'd never learned how to do it properly. 

Tessa led the way up the walk and glanced over to make sure Alec was composed before opening the door. Woolsey answered it a moment later in a state of undress, his shirt half unbuttoned, his hair a cloud of gold around his head, a dress gown thrown over his shoulders. Tessa considered him. He was a terrible idea for someone like Magnus who wanted love more than just about anything else. A rebound. Alec frowned at him but said nothing. 

"Good afternoon Mr. Scott," Tessa said. She'd had to look that up too. She remembered Woolsey, remembered him being vaguely menacing as he told her she had found two great loves. As much as he had been right, she didn't remember him fondly. The years after they'd taken over the Institute, she had almost always tried to leave meetings with him to Will or they'd dealt with one of his lieutenants. 

"What are you doing here?" he asked. 

"I invited her," Magnus said from somewhere behind him. 

He appeared in the door blessedly fully dressed. By Magnus's standards he was dressed quite demurely though his waistcoat was an iridescent purple. He came to lean against the door frame beside Woolsey and cross his arms. Tessa did not turn to look at Alec but she checked on his expression out of the corner of her eye. He was watching Magnus and Woolsey with a determined lack of expression.  

"You're a terrible house guest," Woolsey said then he turned and stomped back inside. Magnus watched him go before turning back to the two of them standing on the stoop. 

"This isn't the one I was expecting you to bring along," Magnus said, "You have a Shadowhunter for every day of the week don't you?" 

"May we come in, Magnus?" she asked laughing at him. He reconsidered her and she raised her eyebrows at him.  He could use flirtation and being outrageous to put most people on edge but it wasn't going to work on her and she wanted him to know it.

"Of course, in you come then," he said stepping back with a bit of a bow. He settled them in the sitting room. Woolsey was nowhere to be seen and Magnus conjured tea things. For a brief moment it seemed almost normal to be sitting with the two of them. But then Magnus was making small talk about Mortmain and Downworld politics and she was reminded how far from that old normal they were. 

"So what is it you wanted to talk about?" Magnus asked over the rim of his teacup. His cat eyes flickering between her and Alec. Alec kept pulling his attention though it was subtle. Alec also hadn't said a word and Tessa suspected that had something to do with Magnus's curiosity. There had been a stiff handshake and Magnus had given him a considering look when he'd learned his name but since then, Alec had been all but silent. 

"I was wondering if you could help with making Downworld introductions for me," she said. 

"Who do you want to be introduced to?" he asked. 

"I used to get all my contracts through the La Miroir marketplace in the south of France. Ragnor arranged for my introduction to Marcelline back when I was still living among the Clave. I was hoping you might have similar connections you'd let me use," she said. 

"Why not go to Ragnor?" Magnus asked. 

"I will. I have a meeting with him next week but you're a friend Magnus. I know we aren't friends right now, I know that the Tessa Gray you know is a little girl with a strange talent but to me, you are family. You have known my family for generations, you were the person who helped put me back together when everything I knew fell apart. You were at my wedding, I was at yours," she said. 

"Are you going to tell me my future? All about this wedding?" Magnus asked. 

"Not unless you ask for it and even then only if you ask me something specific," she said. 

"What about you, do you tell fortunes too?" Magnus asked Alec. 

"No," he said stiffly, "I don't tell fortunes." 

Magnus considered him and then shrugged elegantly, letting the topic go. Each time he had set in on some bit of flirting either Tessa had cut him off or Alec had shut him down and now he was more curious than he might have been. She didn't think he was truly curious about his future, the Magnus she knew lived entirely in the present, but he was curious about Alec. She shot him a small smile when she noticed him watching Alec who was still holding onto his stoic and disinterested manner. Magnus tilted his head at her and raised his eyebrows. 

"May I borrow your companion for a moment?" Magnus asked Alec and Alec started to shrug and then just nodded. Tessa followed Magnus out into the hall and he led the way down to a small library. It was a cozy room. A large arm chair, a little grate, shelves of books. She might have stopped to browse if Magnus didn't round her as soon as the door was closed. 

"Who is that boy to me?" Magnus asked. 

"Do you really want me to answer that?" she asked. 

"Why did you bring him along?" he asked. 

"He wanted to see you and it's easier to cross town with a man as an escort," she said. 

"I'm not interested in getting any farther mixed up with Shadowhunters. Your Will is enough Shadowhunter to deal with for a century. I'm not interested," he said. 

"I don't know that he is either," Tessa said, "You won't meet him for more than a century. You won't be the same person then than you are now. Just don't be cruel to him, Magnus. You can rail at me if you need to but leave him out of it." 

Magnus stared at her, his eyes hard and his mouth set. She reached up and touched his face and gave him a sympathetic look that made him falter. His heart had just broken, of course he wasn't ready for someone else to walk into it. She regretted pulling Alec along. She should have thought it through better. Magnus looked at her with distrust in his eyes. They weren't friends yet. He didn't know her that well but she pulled him into a hug anyways. 

"I am sorry, I didn't mean to throw this at you. I was thinking about him and I should have thought it through farther," she said, "I won't do it again." 

"I won't be cruel to him," Magnus said returning the hug. 

"Thank you," she said. 

The time alone had given Alec time to gather himself and he was far more normal when they returned to the room. A little stumbling and awkward in everything he said but no longer silent. Magnus's curiosity had gone from passing to intent and all attempts at flirting had ground to a halt. Tessa felt a little less guilty for forcing them into the same room when one of Alec's comments startled a laugh out of Magnus and for a brief moment they were both smiling. 

The conversation meandered. She hadn't really come just to ask Magnus to introduce her other warlocks, she had come to try and restart their friendship. It was as much as a social call as anything else. The patterns of polite society, the way Magnus flaunted some of them but not all of them, it was like slipping into an old skin. She found her accent shifting and more words that had fallen out of fashion were making their way back into her speech. She was reminded of things she had forgotten about Downworld and about London as Magnus talked. 

"You're pretty enough that I'd let you come back," Magnus told Alec as they started to make their way to the front door. It was late afternoon now and Tessa was later than she had intended. She was busy plotting how difficult it would be to hire a cab at this time of day while they talked.

"You just like a man with blue eyes," Alec shot back with just the hint of a smile. 

"I am guilty of that," Magnus said still smiling at him. 

Tessa left them to their tentative flirting and stepped out into the street. 

And froze. 

It was quiet but that wasn't what set her on edge. It took her a long moment to realize what had made her heart rate pick up. There were four people on the street who had all turned to look at her in a single synchronized movement. There were other people on the street so it wasn't immediately obvious but they hadn't returned to what they were doing. A couple across the road, a coachman standing outside a waiting carriage and the driver up on the carriage seat. 

"Alec," she said as calmly as she could manage. 

"Yeah?" he said from inside. 

"Stay inside for a moment," she said still watching the bulbous eyes of the people watching her and standing as still as statues. The couple across the road were blocking traffic and a man glowered at them as he stepped around them. These were the things of old nightmares. The couple across the road were almost identical to the ones who had chased her and Jem the first night he had taken her out to Blackfriar's Bridge. It wasn't the memory of them that haunted her, it was the memory of him collapsing. 

"What is going on?" Alec asked and she shook her head at him before he could step out of the house into view. 

"Do you see them?" she asked. 

"Is your dress particularly unfashionable?" he said in a mock accent that would have made her laugh in another situation when her childhood nightmares weren't lined up on the street. They should have brought the carriage, they should have brought more weaponry, she should have expected this. She had forgotten that this wasn't a long gone danger anymore. 

"They're automatons," she said and then gave him the most concise version of the story she could come up with: "There's a man here, in this time, who wanted me to work a very particular spell for him. He's sent automatons after me before." 

"Are we going to try and fight or run?" Alec asked. 

She turned and looked at him and started running options. He was scanning the street, doing much the same thing. He was about to get pulled into another conflict that wasn't really his. He didn't complain and she felt a burst of gratitude for him. 

"I would say run, but we haven't got anywhere to run to," she said. 

"So we stay here and call for reinforcements," he said. 

"On your cellphone?" she said. 

"Oh, right, what about fire messages?" he asked. 

"Fire messages haven't been invented yet. We could send one but there isn't anything to receive it at the Institute," she said. 

Tessa kept an eye on the street. Another man came to a stop with the footman as they spoke. He joined in the staring at her. She looked up the street to see a woman wearing a maid's uniform and those same protruding eyes coming to a stop on the other side of the sidewalk. She carried an umbrella in her hand. It shouldn't have been an ominous implement but it made Tessa's skin crawl as though it were a scythe. 

"Is there a reason there are strangers in the back garden?" Woolsey's voice came drifting down the stairs, "I may go out and bite them all out of spite." 

"They'll break your teeth," Tessa called back and turned back to the street with her heart in her throat. They weren't hostile. There were no visible weapons, none of the giant bronze ones with blades instead of arms, just strange people stopping to stare. But they were outnumbered. Each automaton was stupid and slow but it wouldn't matter when there were this many of them. They couldn't go out onto the street. 

"Portal then," Alec said. 

Tessa grimaced at that. It was going to take time. She wasn't good at that kind of magic. She could do it but getting them up quickly wasn't easy. She turned and started pulling portraits off of the wall. Woolsey came down the stairs and grimaced at her. 

"What are you doing?" he asked. 

"I need something to write with," she said. 

"Do not draw on my walls," Woolsey snapped. 

There was a knock at the door and everyone turned to look. Magnus conjured a charcoal pencil and handed it to her while Woolsey growled about it. She started sketching out runes and the knock at the door got louder. She paused to collect herself, she knew how to do this, she could do it from memory if she stayed calm. 

"Are those things going to tear through my door?" Woolsey asked. 

"They'll try," Tessa said.

She kept drawing but the knocking had become hammering and Alec called out that it was coming from the back of the house as well. She tried to block it all out and focus on where the runes needed to connect. When the automatons burst the the front door, Magnus threw up some sort of blocking spell that she didn't let herself pay attention to. Woolsey was swearing and Alec had produced a sword from somewhere. Magnus extended the force field to block both sides as the back door cracked down. 

"You have thirty seconds," Magnus said to her and she read over the runes she'd drawn. There were ways to sketch up a portal that were faster than this but in the moment she had defaulted to the one she had learned first. It was Henry and Magnus's original design and it was a complex nightmare of magic. Shadowhunter runes and bits of three different magical traditions and two languages. It wasn't done. It wasn't close to done. 

"We need a plan B," she said, "If you can get me time, I can finish this but I need more than thirty seconds."

"Get upstairs, maybe we can block them down here," Alec said. 

They backed up the stairs and as soon as Magnus's spell dropped, the automatons surged forward. Before Tessa had a chance to worry that Magnus had tired himself out with the forcefield, Alec was already dragging him up the stairs with an arm over his shoulder. They headed to the back bedroom, as far from the stairs as they could get. The room reeked of magic and the remains of a spell circle could faintly be seen on the floor. Tessa pulled up a reserve of magic she didn't usually use and pulled every piece of furniture she could wrap her mind around into the hallway. It was inelegant but it would slow them down. 

"Sorry for bringing trouble to your doorstep," she said to Magnus.

"It keeps life interesting," he said. He leaned against the wall by the window but he was already gathering his strength. How much more powerful he was shocked her sometimes. Having as much power as she did surprised her sometimes, she couldn't quite imagine living with the amount of power that Magnus had. 

Alec opened the window and leaned out. 

"We can get up onto the roof or down into the back, does that garage thing have a carriage in it? Could we outrun them?" Alec asked. 

"The carriage on the street is parked in front of the laneway," Tessa said looking out at the narrow lane running behind the row of houses. It would funnel out to the drive that the automatons had blocked. She wasn't even sure that Woolsey had a carriage of his own but it wouldn't have mattered, "In a car, it might be worth it to try and ram it and out run them but that lane is the only way to get a carriage out and horses aren't going to charge another carriage and even if they would, they wouldn't be in any shape to outrun anything once they'd done it." 

"So is our solution to sneak out the bedroom window like a fifteen year old with an illicit boyfriend?" Alec asked looking up at the roof. 

"I'm open to other suggestions," Tessa said looking down at the ledge and at the gutter on the roof above. She wanted to get to the rooftop and trust that the automatons wouldn't be able to climb. If they could get ahead of them or double back once they were all going in the wrong direction, they might be able to make it out to the main street and find someplace to hide and draw a proper portal. Automatons were stupid and they could only follow so many instructions at once.  

Alec swung out the window first as the sounds of pursuit and crunching furniture could be heard outside the door. He balanced on the ledge and then climbed up onto the roof in one of those Shadowhunter movements that was all grace. She took a moment to curse her dress before climbing up on the ledge and reaching out a hand. Alec pulled her up and she kept her scrambling to a minimum. It wasn't graceful but it wasn't embarrassing. Alec pulled up Magnus and Woolsey as well. 

"I will never forgive any of you for this," Woolsey said. 

"Poor you," Alec drawled as he pulled himself up and found his footing on the roof tiles.

"Which way can we get the farthest?" Tessa asked. Below them there was another splintering sound and Woolsey made a disgusted face but didn't yell out any more swear words. They all fell silent.  Magnus stood up by Alec and looked out over the roof tops. He pointed and headed in that direction. It was hard to move quietly over slate tiles and Alec was the only one who succeeding at it. Woolsey made an alarming amount of noise. 

Magnus was recovered enough to cast a glamour that would work on mundanes but depending on what the automatons used to sense the world around them, it wouldn't keep them from noticing. For a little while it looked like they hadn't been seen. They reached a break in the rooftops at the laneway and looked down to see people milling in the alley below them. Most of them wore the course clothing of workmen but a few wore the uniforms of servants. 

Tessa swore softly. Alec jumped the gap and the automatons raised their heads in that perfectly choreographed single movement to follow his path. Tessa jerked back from the edge. Woolsey leaned out and looked down at them, his hair falling forward around his face as he looked down. Tessa hadn't noticed but he was still wearing his paisley housecoat. He jumped after Alec, landing lightly. Tessa might have been able to make the jump back when she was training regularly but she didn't think she would be able to do it not and not in a dress like this. 

"I'm going to push, keep you up in the air," Magnus said. 

"Don't drop me," she said with a laugh. 

"So little trust, haven't we been friends for decades?" Magnus said. 

"Before they climb the brick, would be appreciated," Woolsey called to them. 

Tessa took a run at the gap and jumped. She felt the magic catch her and push her forward and for a moment it looked like it was going to be easy. Alec held out a hand to pull her the rest of the way in but before she could catch it she was knocked sideways. 

The automatons didn't need to climb the brick. Once she was out over the edge one of them threw something heavy. Tessa didn't see what it was but it knocked her out of the path of Magnus's magic and the momentum from her jump kept carrying her forward. She hit the wall of the building that Alec and Woolsey stood on top of hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to break any bones. At least she didn't think anything was broken. Magnus was yelling things and she suspected Alec was too but the two impacts had left her reeling. She tried to catch hold of the wall but something else hit her across the shoulder and she lost her tenuous grip. 

She was prepared to roll but she didn't hit the ground. She was caught out of the air by harsh hands and it jarred as much as hitting the cobblestones might have. She kicked out but she was already at a disadvantage and these weren't people, they didn't feel pain. They simply gathered her up and trundled her away as she twisted against metal hands that were going to leave bruises up and down her body. Her boot crunched against the side of one of their heads but it didn’t even blink down at her.

She gathered up her magic and slammed it back into them. She was dropped to the ground and rolled out of the way of a pair of jittering feet. She had damaged one of them and it was wheeling around. She felt another blast of magic over her head and stayed down rather than get in Magnus’s way. Another automaton caught her arm and yanked her to her feet. They were all utterly silent unless they were being slammed into walls. 

“Tessa?” Alec’s voice rose over the sound of metal and impacts. 

“Still here,” she yelled back as she attempted to gather another wave of magic to hit the thing holding her. They were wildly outnumbered and there were two holding her now. Her dress tore as she twisted away from them and she could feel the metal of their hands against the skin of her arm. She pulled up the magic she had left and then stopped and held it. She turned so she could see Magnus and Alec behind her. Woolsey, probably to much complaining later, had dropped into the fight as well. The automatons had backed them in against one of the walls of the alley. 

Tessa curled up the magic she had left. The automatons were after her. They weren’t armed so their attacks were ineffectual but still, they were a mob against three. She let the automaton holding her lift her up into the carriage. As soon as she was inside, the others dispersed. It happened even before the door had shut. She caught Magnus’s confused expression over the heads of the damaged and shambling automatons. Then the door was slammed shut and the carriage was moving fast. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Walking to Woolsey's from the Institute would have taken more than an hour.... which I didn't look up before starting to write this chapter. I'm leaving it for two reasons, because someone else needs the carriage next chapter (and the Institute only has one) and also because I like the idea of Tessa forcing Alec to hike across London with her because he 'needs some sun'. Well three, because being a long way from help also adds tension. It ended up working quite well. *pats self on head*


	42. Hay Lofts and Blood Trails

Jem came back up the stairs to find Will in music room. Tessa and Alec had left on their little cross-London trek and he was surprised to see the carriage rolling out beneath the Institute gates as well. They watched it go through the warped ancient glass in the window. Jem ran his finger down the pane and wondered at how long the London Institute had been standing. It had been here for hundreds of years before he had been born and it would stand for a hundred more after he was gone. He pressed his palm to the glass and could feel Will’s eyes on him though he didn’t comment on it.

"Where are they going?” Jem asked.

"A carriage ride," Will said with a shake of his head, "He's barely well enough to sit up and they're going out for a drive.”

"All he has to do is sit," Jem said with a shrug and a little half smile.

His younger self had finally woken up the day before and once he was awake, his recovery no longer seemed tentative or potential in the slightest. He wasn't just recovering, he was recovering fast. It was almost dizzying. Someone, meaning well, had once said that Jem made playing the violin look easy. He had remembered thinking it was a ridiculous statement. The violin wasn't easy, he had just been doing it for a long time. This recovery looked easy. As easy as getting over a nasty head cold. Everything looked easy when it was over.

Will set his chin on Jem's shoulder. It pulled a smile from him. Will leaned in so his forehead touched the side of Jem's face. Jem laughed and reached up to pet his hair and Will cuddled in behind him. They were in the music room and Jem let himself forget that the door wasn't locked and leaned back into the hug. That he had ever not been like this with Will was starting to feel like a strange dream. Of course they had always been like this. All his old memories were now being seen through this lens. Memories of sharing beds and training and kicking the other in the leg to catch their attention. Was any of that so different from this?

"Are you doing ok?" Will asked in a quiet voice and he made the phrase "ok" sound awkward and stilted somehow as though he wasn't sure he was using it correctly. Jem pushed back against him so that his shoulders were tight to Will's chest.

"Yes," he said.

"Are you lying to me?" Will asked.

"This is all taking some adjustment," Jem said which was not a lie but Will waited as though he knew that Jem was leaving something out which was surprising. Will took him at face value. When he said something, Will believed him. Will didn't push. Jem smiled because he could almost hear the conversation that Tessa would have had with Will where she insisted that something was wrong. There were some things in this that he couldn't say to her but still she knew. Tessa always knew.

"Being here, facing him, and everything I lost, it's strange," Jem said after pausing. He counted out Will’s heartbeats before continuing, "It is unsettling to imagine how different I might have been and to think of the things that he will never get to have and the things he will. He will never become who I am. I exist as I do because of what happened to me. The good and the bad."

"What's he going to miss out on?" Will asked.

"Youtube, parties in Thailand with Tess's warlock friends, highway driving," Jem said and he could feel Will laugh and he waited for it to quiet before he let himself say the rest of it, "Your family. He'll never have Jamie Herondale come to him with secrets he can’t tell anyone else or Lucie when she was still tiny fall asleep on his lap. I watched over that family for generations not only for you or for her but because I loved them.”

“And yet he will be able to attend his own wedding. Have his own children,” Will said.

Jem inhaled slowly and then turned around so he could bury his face in Will’s shoulder. Will held onto him. He wrapped his arms around Jem pulled him in. Jem took another moment of counting heartbeats and appreciating the feeling of being surrounded before he tried to put it into words.

“He’ll never doubt her. Not once in his entire life will he doubt her,” Jem said.

“You don’t doubt her,” Will said.

“We met on Blackfriar’s bridge every year. 129 meetings. At the first one, she told me that you had asked her to marry you. At the last one I turned and ran from her because I couldn’t quite bring myself to ask her if she loved me,” Jem spoke into the little space behind Will’s ear and Will folded in tighter around him.

“You went back,” Will said.

“No, God no, I made her chase me across that bridge through the traffic and the pedestrians,” Jem said with a laugh that was't quite happy.

“And she did,” Will insisted.

“Of course she did,” Jem said, “I should have know that she would. She loves you. She always did and she never stopped and I understand that. I never resented your marriage. I never hated you or wished you anything but happiness but if someone had you, what would they see in me? How could I compare to that?”

The loss of Tessa was an old wound, long scarred and more recently healed but seeing them together had been picking at it. He could remember the way the doubts had evaporated when she had said yes, when she had taken the necklace and promised him all the years they could squeeze out of his short life. The panic and the exhilaration of that. Of wanting to be everything she deserved and fearing that he had asked her to tie herself to a sinking ship. And then it had all come crashing down.

He had wanted more than anything to see that promise through and hadn’t had the chance. Now there was this new world, this other young man, had an entire lifetime to spend with a girl who loved him. She would never tell him she was marrying someone else. She would lose Will without ever knowing it was a possibility. Jem could decide if that was better or worse than the alternative.

“That is ridiculous,” Will said.

“I know, you’re awful, I can see that now,” Jem said and Will laughed at him. The little shoving match that ensued happened without either of them letting go. It ended with them caught up against the heavy velvet curtains beside the window.

“Let’s go somewhere,” Jem said. It was a long healed wound, he told himself and if he hadn’t lost them both then, he wouldn’t have these moments now. 

“Do you want to go on a romantic carriage ride through the park?” Will asked leaning in so Jem was trapped between him and the wall.

“No, too many people in a park,” Jem said pressing back against Will with just enough pressure to make sure he knew what was being suggested but not enough to push him away. Will matched it. He kissed him just above his collar and Jem's stomach twisted sideways. Will was familiar and comfortable in one breath then exhilarating and new in the next.

Will leaned back and braced his hands on either side of Jem's head and considered him. Jem had some ideas but if Will wanted to lead on this one then he was happy to sit back and let him make those choices. Jem ignored the look because he knew it would pull a reaction from Will. He adjusted Will’s clothing so it all lay flat again and then did his own. He looked back up to find Will was watching his hands. He paused to spread them flat against Will's chest on either side of the lapels of the now neat jacket. Will's expression was different not calculating and curious but softer.

"I love you, in all the ways you can love a person," Jem said because he wasn't sure if Will would be able to put that expression into words and he wanted it said.

"I love you too," Will said but then his expression shifted to a lopsided smile, "But that doesn't surprise you."

"No, you've always loved me because I am vastly more likable than you are," Jem said as serenely as he could manage while Will was looking at him like that.

"It's not as funny a joke when it's true," Will said.

"I'm not joking," Jem told him, "I am superior in all ways, more likable, smarter and much prettier."

"I am offended," Will said.

"Such harsh truths for such a gentle soul, you poor sweet thing," Jem said and started to move before he finished the sentence because Will was grabbing for him. He laughed as he pulled away and spun out of reach. He let Will catch him by the door but twisted them around so it was Will who ended up with his back to the wall this time. Jem caught his face between his hands and started to pull him in.

"I am not doing this in the music room. Sophie would die if she caught us," Will said and Jem stopped shy of closing the kiss and reluctantly pulled away.

When Will pulled him out of the room, he was expecting to be taken back to the bedroom but instead Will led him down the hallway. Jem followed him out the back door of the Institute onto the grounds. In the center of London calling the patch of grass beside the carriage house ‘grounds’ was a little bit pretentious but they were surrounded by a high wall which kind of precluded it being a lawn. Will led the way across the grass and up into the carriage house.

"What are we doing here?" Jem asked.

"Sharing secrets," Will said.

"Really?" Jem said.

"This is where I come when I don't want to be found but I don't want to be out in the city. There are some nights when I would walk until I was exhausted and there are some nights when I would spend the night in here with a candle and a book or just my own thoughts," Will said.

"Why here?" Jem asked.

"Inside the Institute is a Shadowhunter place, London is a city, neither reminded me of home and sometimes I wanted to be reminded of home. As much as I have pretended otherwise," Will said as he led the way up into the loft. It was full of hay and crates of things that Jem could identify beyond being related to horses. It smelled like straw and leather and faintly of animals.

"It smells like a barn," Jem said.

"I grew up on a country estate, city boy, half my life smelled like a barn," Will said with a laugh and he flung himself down into a pile of hay by the window. A crate had been pushed over against the wall to make a table though it didn't look intentional until Will was sitting there. Jem could picture him as a little boy, hiding up here and letting his homesickness out.

"I used to walk down by docks because sometimes there were sailors down there from China. I never spoke to anyone, I just liked being able to hear the language," Jem said sitting down on Will's crate and looking down at the lawn below.

"We were miserable lonely brats weren't we?" Will said.

"No," Jem said then shrugged, "A little bit, I suppose, but we had each other which is more than most people get in this world."

Will reached out and grabbed hold of Jem's belt and pulled him down off the crate and into the pile of hay. Jem started to protest, to complain about ruined clothing and hay in his hair but Will gave him a smile. Between the crate and the wall there was not a lot of space and Will had looped his arm around Jem's waist so he was held close. The complaints fled. Instead, he reached up and pull a bit of hay out of Will's hair. Will pulled him in a little tighter and he shifted until their bodies were pressed together, half leaned against the wall and half sprawled in the hay on the floor.

Will kissed him. It wasn’t demanding. It was almost a question. Jem pushed back into it as rolled back and pulled Will down over him. He liked the way Will seemed to blot out the world, filling up everything he could see and feel until it was just the two of them. They had had kisses fueled by desire and wrapped up in surprise or built on fear and relief. This was gentler and slower and felt like home. Will traced his fingers over Jem's face, running a hand down his chest. They settled into each other and Will kissed his nose and his eyelids while Jem ran fingers through his hair.

"I'm going to figure out how to get away with it," Jem said into his mouth.

"Get away with what?" Will asked.

"Asking you to marry me," he said.

Will laughed at that and Jem let him make it a joke though he hadn't meant it as one. Will settled in against him and they whispered about childhoods and old jokes and things that Jem hadn't known he could even remember. Stories book ended by exploring hands and punctuated by kisses. A part of Jem wanted to start pulling off clothing but the other part wanted to enjoy this moment as it was. Safe and together and happy and just a little bit innocent.

They were still curled together, pressed close and unwilling to get up when they heard the clatter of hooves. Will looked up from a kiss with a frown. Jem reached up to pull him back. He slipped his hand up Will's neck and pulled his face around so that he could kiss him again.

"They're not going to come up here, leave it," Jem said.

"It's only one horse," Will said.

"What?" Jem hadn't been paying that much attention, he might not have noticed at all if Will hadn't sat up.

"It's only one horse, they took both," Will said.

Jem finally put those pieces together. He couldn't hear wagon wheels or voices either, just the sound of hooves on the courtyard below. He followed Will as he got up, shaking hay out of his hair and trying to straighten his rumbled mess of clothing. Will didn't even bother. He crossed the loft to crack open a shutter and look down. Then he spun and ran for the door. Jem followed him out.

It was a lone horse without a rider. Jem couldn't even remember the horses' names or how to tell them apart but the way Will approached it said it was one of the Institute's. It had the remains of its bridle still in place and some of the straps that should have attached it to the carriage. It was stamping and kept tossing its head until Will got a hand on the bridle and it stilled.

"There's blood," Jem said.

He rounded the animal, staying back in case it decided to rear or kick to see a long blood gash across its flank. That was how it had gotten disconnected from the carriage. Jem looked up at Will who looked back with alarm in every feature.

"Take it inside, I'll get Charlotte and the others," Jem said.

"Where did they go?" Will asked.

"You aren't going alone and you certainly aren't going to ride that horse in its condition," Jem said. Then before Will could argue with him he turned and ran for the door. He hit the bell on the way in and it was Henry that met him first. Will was just behind him. He must have just pushed the animal inside and closed the door. 

"What happened to the two of you?" Henry asked looking them over.

"There was an incident in the stables, one of the horses came back, it had been attacked. The rest of the carriage still out there somewhere," Jem said which didn't really explained why it looked like they had been rolling around in hay bales fully dressed but it was the more important answer. Henry didn’t concern himself with it. He looked towards London as though expecting to see the answer there beyond the gates. A trail of blood droplets led across the stone. Scattered but distinct. 

Jem was caught between reactions. The desire to let his heart start racing, to yell things and demand action warred with the old Silent Brother reaction of retreating into himself. He let the quiet win. There was a place inside him where the calm stopped being a choice and simply was and he fell into it. Something very bad had happened and he needed that distance to think about it rationally. 

Will wasn't bothering with rational or with calm. He called the hurried explanation back to Henry as he started across the courtyard, "Something's happened to Tessa and Jem. We need to go after that blood trail before we lose it in the muck of the streets." 

Jem hesitated and then gave Henry a list of instructions, requests for weaponry and reinforcements and which direction they were headed in. Once Henry was nodding and headed inside to find Charlotte, Jem wheeled and headed after Will who was already past the gates. He took a moment to curse the lack of a cell signal and pray that this was simply a carriage accident and not something far worse. 


	43. A Simple Plan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not going to lie to you this time with promises of update schedules. 
> 
> Only this, I will finish this story. I love it and want to see it through to the very end.

Since they’d made it back ot the Institute, Will had slipped into a quiet empty waiting. They'd found the mangled carriage on the side of the road in a pool of blood. The other horse was dead and the door had been pulled off its hinges. There had been enough glamour on the carriage that it could lie tilted on a broken wheel just outside the entrance to Hyde Park and the afternoon traffic had just wove around it. Cyril had been thrown wide and was found battered but otherwise uninjured. There had been signs of a struggle: a severed automaton's hand lying in a puddle, a broken blade, a lady's shoe. 

It had been impossible to say if the blood was from the passengers or just from the slaughtered animal. 

They'd left the wreckage to be dragged back by a hired team of horses later. Since then Will had been sitting with his back against Jem's knee and his eyes on the fire while the wheels turned in his mind. Jem could almost hear him thinking. He sometimes muttered his best ideas aloud, usually in Chinese as though he wasn't ready to tell anyone else. Jem shot them full of holes or added details as they required. He also translated for Charlotte and Henry when an idea warranted it and Charlotte shot it through with more holes or asked the questions neither of them had considered. 

Jem hadn't seen the carnage in the Gard Hall when Mortmain's automatons had invaded but he had heard the stories. It had been the most violent thing to happen in Alicante since the city’s founding. It wouldn't be until Valentine Morgenstern brought an uprising and then a war to the city's gates that anything worse would happen on Shadowhunter's home soil. He didn’t ever want to see carnage like that brought home again. 

His Tessa had survived Cadair Idris. Jem had never known the full details of what had happened to her there but he knew she hadn't been tortured or abused and he clung to that. That was Tessa. Mortmain needed Tessa but he didn't need the extra person from the carriage. Jem had never worried particularly about being injured himself but seeing this younger version of himself was like finding himself with a younger sibling. It was a strange kind of worry. He wanted them both back home sooner rather than later. 

They needed a portal. They weren't going to be able to catch a mechanical carriage even if they knew where it was going. The best plan at this point was to convince the Clave to send a force that they could drop onto the road at the Welsh border with a portal. Jem had asked Charlotte to send a runner to Magnus Bane to get Tessa and Alec back before they lost the lead entirely. It was a simple plan.

“Why not just portal into the fortress itself and burn the thing down?” Will asked. It was the first time he had spoken directly to anyone but Jem in what felt like a long time.

“The best way to avoid anything worse happening is to keep Tessa away from Mortmain and his plans altogether. We can take on Cadair Idris once she’s safe. If she gives him the spell he wants, it all gets that much more difficult, it could become an unwinnable war. We didn't win it in combat the first time. Demonic automatons are far, far different from the mechanical ones you have seen so far. It is better if you never need to see them at all," Jem said. 

"She's a stubborn girl, she knows the stakes. He wants her to change into someone particular to give him this spell. She can stall that off. You think she'll cave to what he wants so easily?" Charlotte had asked when Jem had explained. 

"If he threatens Jem she will do it. Why else would he take both? He isn't a particularly sentimental person," Will said.  

The door creaked open. Magnus swept into the room looking annoyed. Jem had gotten so used to thinking of him as Tessa’s goofy friend that it was a little jarring to be reminded that he was this as well. Tall and hostile. It was, surprisingly, reassuring. This wasn’t the same Magnus that Jem knew well but it nice to have someone with that sort of roiling energy on their side. 

"You got here faster than I would have expected," Jem said with a smile as Magnus swept into the room. Sophie scampered in after Magnus, looking apologetic for not having announced him properly. Alec was behind her and that meant Tessa was there as well and Jem let himself relax at that thought. 

Will pulled himself up to his feet in one graceful movement and approached Magnus. Jem felt the lack of his warmth against his leg like an anchor being cast off. Magnus frowned at Will. It was a small expression, more curious than anything else. Alec appeared at Magnus's shoulder and for a moment Jem forgot that they weren't a couple in this time. It felt normal to see them lined up like that. Alec looked past Will at him. Something was wrong. 

"What happened?" he asked and he knew it was his Silent Brother voice. Empty of emotion.

"What happened here? Why were you expecting us?" Magnus asked. 

"They took Tessa," Alec said. He spoke to Jem. After spending most of the last hour with all his attention on keeping Will from flying off into rash decisions or a rage, it was strange to be the one addressed gently. Alec wasn't talking to Will but Will was staring a hole in the side of his head. Jem crossed the room and put his hand on Will's back to keep him from saying something he would regret when he wasn't so furiously angry. 

"How do you know that?" Jem asked. 

"We saw it happen," Alec said. 

"You saw the attack on the carriage? That doesn't make any sense," Jem said. 

"No," Alec said, "I mean there was a carriage involved but there wasn't really an attack on it." 

Jem sighed and then swore. 

Once. 

Calmly.  

Then he went and sat back down. He could feel the rush of thoughts but they were happening in the real human part of his mind and he'd locked himself away behind Zachariah. It had taken him years to shake this. To be able to open his rational mind and his emotional one at the same time without drowning in feeling. Now he shut out his heart and tried to think clearly. 

"Tessa's gone, my Tessa, she's been taken as well," Jem said and the emotion only crept in once. The word 'my' had come out with all the power of a prayer though Jem didn't know if there was anything out there worth praying to.

“How did that happen?” Charlotte asked. 

Magnus told the story of the attack on Woolsey’s townhouse in a clipped calm voice. Will stood still and angry for the first part of it before coming to sit beside Jem. Still tense. Still angry. And too close. Too close to be normal but no one seemed to notice and the contact helped keep Jem from slipping too far into Brother Zachariah. He wanted to lace his fingers through with Will's and hold on but he was afraid to move. If he moved, he would lose his calm. 

“She left partial designs for the portal on your wall? Can I see them?” Henry asked. He had been quiet through much of the conversation. Will’s overwrought emotional state and the constant talk of strategy hadn’t really left him much space in the conversation but he perked up, interrupting Magnus mid-sentence. 

“Yes, Woolsey was not pleased,” Magnus said. 

“I had been working on a portal design but there are missing elements, things I could never quite make work. There are runes that would not work but if I could see a magical version, perhaps I might be able to make sense of the missing pieces,” Henry said and then he was away, talking theories that even Jem couldn’t make sense of but Magnus was nodding along as though it were all perfectly logical. 

“That sounds like the Branwell Portal. It’s been a pretty standard design for like two hundred years. There are Branwell portals that have been open for decades. Magnus, m- other Magnus, loves the damn thing. I know there’s a big one in London. You must know where it is,” Alec said looking up at Jem. 

“Henry’s lab, it’s in the crypt below us here. It’s actually only 136 years old, not two hundred. It hasn’t been drawn yet,” Jem said frowning at him, “You were introduced, weren’t you?” 

Alec looked over at Henry then back at Jem and frowned, “You mean to tell me he is that Branwell?” He pointed at Henry, “You are that Branwell? Portal, sensor, Angel knows what else, Branwell? You ate the peas off my plate last night because you were distracted by a conversation about snails. And you’re that Branwell? You're kidding me right? He's William, wrote the book, Herondale and you're invented half the arsenal Branwell. Is anyone in this room not famous?” 

Alec sat down on the nearest chair and looked at Henry. 

“My sensor doesn’t work quite right yet,” Henry admitted.  

“Well, once it works, it’ll be the same one they’ll use for the next 136 years. I know a girl who shoved it down a demon’s throat and it saved her life. You’re kind of a big deal,” Alec said and Henry looked pleased at the title. 

“Back to the problem at hand, can the big deal make us a functional portal?” Will asked and his sarcasm was back. Jem nudged him and he tried to soften his expression but it didn't soften his tone much. “I’ve traveled by those portals. They’re impressive but no one here has ever made one. Should we not be putting people on the road? We may not catch them but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be trying. If they are there ahead of us by a few hours, even a day, it’s better than finding out we can’t make this portal work and being a week behind instead.”

Charlotte stood up. Jem wanted to pause everything to tell Alec that she was Charlotte Fairchild and she had been the first female and one of the longest reigning Consuls in Shadowhunter history. He resisted. He was letting his mind wander and he couldn't afford it. 

“Jem, you and I are going to go and speak to the Clave. Henry and Mr. Bane, you are to work on that portal. If you need to go back out to Mr. Scott’s townhouse then do so. Will and Cecily, take Mr. Lightwood and give us as close to a comprehensive plan of attack for this mountain as possible. We will be prepared for this battle and we will not lose a war on this front. We will meet back here in an hour,” Charlotte said. 

They got up and then did as they were told. Jem grabbed hold of Will’s sleeve and jerked him back around before they went off to do their assigned tasks. Will was too close again and Jem could feel Cecily and Alec watching them. He ignored them, switching to Chinese and keeping his voice low as he spoke into Will’s ear. 

“Whatever it takes, everyone will come home,” Jem said into his ear. 

“I know,” Will said. 

They were too close together for another moment before Jem let go and fell back behind his mask. He would be Zachariah as long as he needed to be. He forced a small smile for Will and then turned to follow Charlotte out of the room. 


End file.
